Re: Patches for IRIX6 N32-ABI ld

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian@zembu.com>]

   From: Mark Mitchell <mark@codesourcery.com>
   Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 14:09:24 -0700

       Ian> Why not have two macros, one for general SGI compatibility,
       Ian> namely the existing SGI_COMPAT, and one new one you can use
       Ian> to check just which sort of SGI compatibility you want for a
       Ian> particular BFD?

   Your suggestion is clearly equally expressive, so it's not like
   something can be done way and not the other.  So, if you insist on
   doing things your way, it's not like we'll lose anything.

   I assumed this to be non-controversial, and used things like
   `SGI_COMPAT (abfd) == sct_irix6' throughout the rest of my patches.
   So, changing this will require a bunch of extra work for me.  That's
   not a great argument, but it's accurate.

Then do it the other way.  Change all the existing uses to, e.g.,
SGI_IRIX_COMPAT (a trivial search and replace).  Then use SGI_COMPAT
when you need to decide the exact level of compatibility.

I don't really care.  But I agree with Richard: I don't want to see
code that will silently fail if a new value is added to the start of
an enum.  Although I admit you wouldn't know it to look at the
binutils, as far as I am concerned long term maintainability is the
single most important characteristic of all code changes.  I will pick
maintainability over features every time.  The code should not only
work correctly, it should be written in a natural style, so that
natural changes will not fail in an unnatural way.  Sometimes that
requires major patches when old code was done inappropriately or even
badly; so it goes.

Ian