Date:	Mon, 14 Nov 1994 09:26:01 -0500 (CDT)
From:	Aaron Ucko <UCKO AT VAX1 DOT ROCKHURST DOT EDU>
Subject:	Re: Shared libraries
To:	dliu AT faraday-gw DOT njit DOT edu
Cc:	djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Organization:	Rockhurst College; Kansas City, MO

>Aaron> Pardon my ignorance again, but...what's -fPIC?  And don't the object-file
>Aaron> utilities included in GCC allow it to be able to deal with both COFF and ELF
>Aaron> format objects?...just my non-cents :-)
>
>Here is what I read from gcc.info:

Whoops!  I guess that serves me right for criticizing people for not R'ing TFM.
:-)  Thanks for the info.
>     m88k, 8k on the Sparc, and 32k on the m68k and RS/6000.  The 386
>     has no such limit.)
Cool!
>     works only on certain machines.  For the 386, GNU CC supports PIC
>     for System V but not for the Sun 386i.  Code generated for the IBM
Why is this?  Just a lack of OS support, or some fundamental hardware problem?
>     The GNU assembler does not fully support PIC.  Currently, you must
>     use some other assembler in order for PIC to work.  We would
>     welcome volunteers to upgrade GAS to handle this; the first part
>     of the job is to figure out what the assembler must do differently.
>
>The remark of gas does not fully support PIC seems out of date now.
Why would it have failed to in the first place?  If the FSF _has_ the generated
assembly code right in front of its face and knows what it's supposed to do,
why is figuring out how it needs to be changed so difficult?  Or is the PIC
support from the assembler triggered instead by a flag or directive?  If so,
that would make more sense--but here I am rambling again. :-)

--- Aaron Ucko (ucko AT vax1 DOT rockhurst DOT edu; finger for PGP public key) -=- httyp!
-=*=-Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.-=*=-
Geek code 2.1 [finger hayden AT vax1 DOT mankato DOT msus DOT edu for explanation]: 
 GCS/M/S d(-) H s g+ p? !au a-- w+ v+ C++(+++)>++++ U-(S+)>++++ P+ L>++ 3(-) 
 E-(----) !N>++ K- W(--) M-(--) V(--) po-(--) Y+(++) t(+) !5 j R G tv--(-) 
 b+++ !D(--) B--(---) e>++++(*) u++(@) h!() f(+) r-(--)>+++ n+(-) y?

- Raw text -