Re: PR 25562: New binutils testsuite failures

[Alan Modra <amodra@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 01:26:53PM +0100, Nick Clifton via Binutils wrote:
> Hi Jozef,
> 
> > The test is working as expected, for those targets an objcopy of an executable
> > is not creating an exact copy of the original file.
> 
> Ah, OK.
> 
> > For the PE targets the datestamp in the executable file is not being copied by
> > objcopy.
> 
> The old determinism problem.  *sigh*  We should probably just xfail these
> targets since we know that the binaries can never be the same.

Except that objcopy -p ought to preserve the time, shouldn't it?

> > For the MIPS targets, objcopy has added the names of output sections to the
> > string table, where in the linked executable they were not in the string table.
> 
> Where were the names stored then, if not in the string table ?  Or did the
> objcopy actually add new section symbols ?

ELF section symbols normally have 0 in st_name, with an implicit name
taken from their section.  MIPS for backwards compatibility with other
linkers gives them a string table entry.  objcopy decided the copy
needed that backward compat, while ld decided the original didn't.

> 
> This does sound like something that the MIPS maintainers ought to investigate
> and decide whether it is a real bug or not.
> 
> > I can file bugzillas for these if you would like.
> 
> No, that should not be necessary.  I will check in an update for the PE targets
> once I have tested it locally.
> 
> Cheers
>   Nick
> 

-- 
Alan Modra
Australia Development Lab, IBM