From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: John Gilmore To: Greg McGary Cc: "Zack Weinberg" , Chris Lattner , gcc@gcc.gnu.org, bernecky@acm.org, gnu@toad.com, gnu@toad.com Subject: Re: Esthetics (or worse?) of Secure Pointers Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 19:40:00 -0000 Message-id: <200104180240.TAA01342@toad.com> References: X-SW-Source: 2001-04/msg00847.html > For a backup plan, I think it's sufficient to mandate no mixing of BP > and non-BP compilation units, distinguished by a special symbol, > enforced by ld. Anyone violently disagree? Yes, I disagree. ELF and many other formats have a field in the file header for what architecture the object file contains. Pick a new architecture specifier when compiling for an architecture with larger pointers. Just as big-endian and little-endian code compiled for the same chip gets different architecture types, big-pointer and little-pointer code for the same chip should be distinguished in this way. I'm pretty sure the linker already checks that you aren't mixing architecture types in your object files. Use the abstractions we already have for what they are designed for, rather than making up new kludges for every special case... John