Re: Mr Taylor surely understands ld: a correction to my previous post

[Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.OZ.AU>]

Jacob Navia wrote:
> 
> But it is the whole philosophy behind this that is flawed. 
> Mr Taylor writes:
> 
> > ...the linker is able to generate an object file
> > format which is different from the input file formats.  For example,
> > this permits the linker to directly generate S-record output without
> > requiring a convertor.
> 
> But WHY do we have to put the convertor and the linker in the SAME PROGRAM!!!

Here's one possible reason (there may be others).

Different object file formats formats have different sets of capabilities.
In general, conversion from one format to another format may not be
able to preserve all the information.  If the linker required all
inputs to have the same format, then you might have to use a lossy
conversion, and that might prevent successful linking.

One possible solution to this problem would be to invent a new object
file format whose capabilities were a superset of the capabilities of
all other object file formats.  Then, you could ensure that the
conversion to this object file format was non-lossy.  However, this
approach would be more complex than the BFD approach, not less complex.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>   |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: < http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh >   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3         |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.
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