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Re: mis-elf-as : local/global symbol order in symbol table


Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
Pierre Habraken <Pierre.Habraken@imag.fr> writes:

The ELF specification states that table all local symbols in a symbol
should precede all global symbols.
mips-elf-as (binutils 2.20) disregards this rule.
Can anyone explain to me the reason for this ?

It's a historical issue. The SGI Irix 5 assembler did not follow this rule, and the Irix 5 linker got confused when gas did try to follow this rule. As I recall, Irix 5 thought the rule applied to STT_SECTION symbols rather than to STB_LOCAL symbols. To work around this we (or maybe just me) introduced all the elf_bad_symtab code. Later this was extended to the IRIX_COMPAT and SGI_COMPAT code. We can probably straighten out mips-elf-as if we try.

Hello Ian,


Thanks for your reply.
I do not know what are "elf_bad_symtab", "IRIX_COMPAT" and "SGI_COMPAT". I assume that they are code chunks in binutils, are they ?


I have to precise that I am not a mips programmer. I just supervise a student project in which students have to program an assembler or a simulator. The mips architecture was choosen for educational reasons (not for technical reasons). Several students ask us why the "official" assembler (mips-elf-as !) does not conform to the ELF specification (this is rather confusing for them). Hence my post.

Pierre
--
Pierre HABRAKEN - mailto:Pierre.Habraken@imag.fr
Tél: 04 76 63 59 94 - Fax: 04 76 51 47 93


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