Re: [v2] PR81358: Enable automatic linking of libatomic

[Sandra Loosemore]

On 2/17/26 16:07, Joseph Myers wrote:
On Tue, 17 Feb 2026, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
Would the following be more accurate and more descriptive?

  @opindex fno-link-libatomic
  @opindex flink-libatomic
  @item -flink-libatomic

  Link with libatomic. Enabled by default.

  The compiler will add options to link to libatomic when it is
  supported by the target, so that the atomic operations defined by
  the C and C++ standards work without requiring explicit action from
  users.  Typically this adds @option{-latomic} to the link command
  line; for the GNU linker @option{--as-needed} is also used.
  The negative form @option{-fno-link-libatomic} can be used to
  explicitly disable linking of libatomic. The options
  @option{-nodefaultlibs} and @option{-nostdlib} will also disable
  linking to libatomic.

I suppose my use of "disabling" still has exactly the problem I
complained about above. Using -fno-link-libatomic doesn't disable
linking to libatomic, nor does -nodefaultlibs. When those options are
used, users can still add -latomic themselves and that will work, so
it hasn't been *disabled*. What the -fno-link-libatomic option does is
disable the *automatic* linking to libatomic, or the *implicit*
linking to libatomic.

So I think this could still do with some more wordsmithing.

One bit of wordsmithing would be that I think it's generally better to say
the compiler *does* something rather than "will" do it.  So "adds options"
not "will add options", and likewise remove "will" in "will also disable"
(along with any change to avoid "disable" there).

Yes, this is something I'm always fixing every time I see it:  write in 
the present tense by default, and reserve the future tense for something 
that explicitly happens later (or that hasn't happened yet, like "this 
deprecated misfeature will be removed in a future release").

Anyway, even without that change I think the proposed replacement text 
is too verbose and too full of tangents.  How about just

@opindex fno-link-libatomic
@opindex flink-libatomic
@item -flink-libatomic
@itemx -fno-link-libatomic
Enable/disable linking with libatomic.  This is enabled by default on 
targets that support it; to explicitly disable it, use
@option{-fno-link-libatomic}.

-Sandra