Feedback on ld circular reference resolution code?

[ian@cygnus.com (Ian Lance Taylor)]

   Date: Thu, 28 Apr 94 12:14:45 PDT
   From: Ted Lemon <mellon@ncd.com>

   The feature operates as RMS described it, not as you are assuming it
   operates.   Why would I go through all that effort to implement
   something that could be done with a trivial command-line hack?

I apologize.  I must have misunderstood what the code was doing.

Let me back up, then.

I would still prefer to see a feature more like what the FSF is
requesting.  One that would essentially treat a set of libraries as a
single library.

One problem with my revised understanding of your patches (and please
correct me if I am wrong) is that the libraries are researched after
all the input files have been seen.  This will not work if there are
any object files which come at the very end of the link, which is
generally the case for COFF and ELF.  For example, gcc on COFF or ELF
requires that the crtend.o file be linked last, after all everything
else (except a possible crtn.o) has been linked.  Do your patches
accomodate that?

Also, adding new fields to the BFD structure itself must be avoided if
at all possible.  I am constantly being beaten up about BFD memory
usage, and doing a link on a large archive can open hundreds of BFD's.
Each new four byte field in a BFD structure can lose a noticeable
amount of memory.

Ian