Re: Linker diagnostics for the incorrect options .

[Fangrui Song <i@maskray.me>]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 5:31 AM Nick Clifton via Binutils
<binutils@sourceware.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Umesh,
>
> > Linker error handling for non  options or incorrect options should be
> > robust for instance like
> > $gcc -c test.c
> > $ld -non-static test.o
> >
> > The linker  interpretation for  "-n" as a standard option for  nmagic ,then
> > "o" as output filename  by name "n-static" which is the dynamic executable .
>
> This is really a feature of the getopt functions provided by the libiberty
> library.  Note that the correct behaviour does happen if you use two dashes
> instead of one:
>
>   % ld --non-static test.o
>   ld: unrecognized option '--non-static'
>   ld: use the --help option for usage information
>
> Essentially this is a user education issue.  Long options should be proceeded
> by double dashes.  Single dashes may work, sometimes, but weird effects can
> also occur.
>
> Cheers
>   Nick
>

This is a conflict between the grouped short options syntax and single
dash prefixed long options.

% touch an ommand ':)'
% ld.bfd -you -can -ofcourse -use -this -Long -command -Line ':)'
:)

For newer long options, we should encourage EXACTLY_TWO_DASHES
(ld/lexsup.c). I have not seen grouped short options in a very large
code base and FreeBSD.
Maybe we can deprecate grouped short options syntax for ld.