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[mips patch RFC] removal of gas embedded-pic support code

Richard Sandiford rsandifo@redhat.com
Wed May 5 20:30:00 GMT 2004 
Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org> writes:
>On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 01:15:55PM -0700, cgd@broadcom.com wrote:
>> I'd say that the mips64-linux-gnu version is the "better" one, since
>> the PC-relative 32/64 relocations were non-standard.

Agreed.

>> But I have no idea how much pain would be caused by switching.  Or
>> whether (and how much) backward-compatibility needs to be maintained.
>
> No compatibility needs to be maintained for this, AFAIK.

I guess it depends on how much lock-in is acceptable between binutils
and gcc.  The patch to make mips*-linux-gnu use pc-relative EH entries
went in over two years ago (17-Feb-02, it seems).  And even the latest
gcc release will try to use them.

If we remove support entirely, it won't be possible for users to upgrade
beyond 2.15 without also upgrading to a newer compiler and recompiling
all their old C++ objects.

BTW, I think this only gives us a reason to keep R_MIPS_PC32.  Has anyone
found non-embedded-pic uses of R_MIPS_PC64?

Richard
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