From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: hjl@nynexst.com (H.J. Lu)
To: ian@cygnus.com (Ian Lance Taylor)
Cc: gas2@cygnus.com
Subject: Re: An ld bug?
Date: Tue, 03 Oct 1995 08:20:00 -0000
Message-id: <9510031520.AA26422@nynexst.com>
References: <199510031425.KAA23139@sanguine.cygnus.com>
X-SW-Source: 1995/msg00175.html

> 
>    From: hjl@nynexst.com (H.J. Lu)
> 
>    It seems gas-950822 doesn't treat common symbols right. Does the newer
>    snapshot still have this bug? BTW, I tested it under i486-linux.
> 
> It only takes you a minute to note what you think is incorrect about
> the program.  Please do that, rather than making me figure out what
> the problem is.  Thanks.

Sorry for that.

> 
> In this case, I assume that you think that the common symbol in the
> object file should cause the object in the archive to be brought in.
> That's the way in works in a.out, but it is not the way it works in
> ELF.  In ELF, objects are only brought in from archives to fill
> references by undefined symbols.
> 
> However, interestingly, I tested the program on Irix 5, UnixWare, and
> Solaris, and, on Solaris, it works the way it does in a.out.  I assume
> this is for SunOS compatibility.  It happens to contradict the Solaris
> linker documentation: ``For an archive library, only those routines
> defining an unresolved external reference are loaded.''
> 

>From my Solaris 2.3 linker manual, on page 12 regarding "Archive
Processing", it says the link-editor will extract a relocatable object
from an archive if it contains a data symbol definition that
satisfies a common symbol definition.

I think that makes sense. Maybe it has been changed in Solaris 2.4/2.5.

Thanks.


-- 
H.J. Lu
NYNEX Science and Technology, Inc.			hjl@nynexst.com