Jon Grant <j...@jguk.org> writes: > I see that some of the files are located in the -L library directory > specified, crtbegin.o, crtend.o in which case, perhaps they both do > not need their full long path specified.
Most linkers do not use the -L path to search for file names on the command line. >>> Also I notice lots of duplicate parameters: >>> >>> Is this directory really needed twice? >>> -L/usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.3.3 -L/usr/lib/gcc/i486-linux-gnu/4.3.3 >> >> No. I would encourage you to investigate why it is happening. > > i tried: gcc -o t -Wl,-debug test.c, I see collect2 gets the > duplicates passed to it, and then it passes it on to ld. I would have > thought that if collect2 was compiled with define > LINK_ELIMINATE_DUPLICATE_LDIRECTORIES it would strip out the duplicate > parameters before calling ld. It does not appear to be switched on in > this Ubuntu package I am using though. Is it on by default? No. It was introduced only to avoid an error in the linker in some version of SGI Irix. Generally the duplicate -L option does no harm. I was actually thinking along of the lines of eliminating it earlier in the process. Why does the directory get in there twice in the first place? >> To see what collect2 is doing, use -Wl,-debug > > If I add this to my existing command line I see there not any output: > $ gcc -### -o t -Wl,-debug test.c > > If I change to not have -### I see it does work, not sure why. -### controls the gcc driver, not the collect2 program. > So I understand that this passes -debug to collect2. As collect2 only > has -v mode to display version. Would a patch to add --help to it be > supported? Also could describe something about collect2's purpose at > the top of that --help output. I think that ordinary uses of -Wl,--help will expect to see the --help option for the linker, not for collect2. That said, I think it would be OK to add a --help option for collect2 which issued some output and then went on to invoke the linker. > 1) collect.c:scan_libraries may not find ldd, in which case it > displays message on output, and returns as normal. Should it not be > fatal if ldd is required? It seems to me that it gives an error message, which should cause collect2 to exit with a non-zero status. Does that not happen for you? Note that ldd is only required on HP/UX. > 2) in collect2.c:main "-debug" is checked, and variable debug set to 1 > (perhaps that should be "true" to match the style of other flags) Yes, and debug should be changed from int to bool. Ian
