On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 12:59:40PM +0200, Niels Thykier wrote: > As discussed on #debian-devel, I am open to the change. However, it > seems that (at least) OCaml is storing bytecode in the .comment section > of its binaries (presumably including static libraries).
To validate this conjecture, I collected all .comment and .note sections from sid amd64. I looked at all files matching lib*.a, but not *_g.a (like dh_strip), obtained a section listing using objdump -h and dumped all .comment and .note sections using readelf -p where available. For the time being, you can find the collected data at http://subdivi.de/~helmut/static_lib_comment_and_note_sections.tar.xz. The vast majority of .comments is gcc, ghc and clang versions. Further analysis of .comment sections can lead to amusement or depression. In any case, I was not able to find bytecode in them. In particular, it seems that OCaml libraries generally lack .comment sections unless they contain C code. > I think we need a (cheap and "fairly") reliable indicator of whether > something is likely to be an OCaml (etc.) static lib, which is storing > bytecode or other "important" data in these sections. > > Other languages that /might/ be doing something similar: > > * Haskell > * Go > * ... ? Given my findings, I believe that there is no need to take special measures here. Do you agree with the observation methodology? Helmut -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
