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Re: i960-* and b.out
- From: Ralf Corsepius <corsepiu at faw dot uni-ulm dot de>
- To: Jim Wilson <wilson at redhat dot com>
- Cc: Joel Sherrill <joel dot sherrill at OARcorp dot com>, Binutils List <binutils at sources dot redhat dot com>, Autoconf List <autoconf at gnu dot org>
- Date: 27 Jul 2002 06:02:07 +0200
- Subject: Re: i960-* and b.out
- References: <3D414F37.2D34922C@OARcorp.com> <xwuheime87v.fsf@tonopah.toronto.redhat.com>
Am Fre, 2002-07-26 um 18.59 schrieb Jim Wilson:
> >I know that unfortunately a lot of i960 tools defaulted to b.out
> >for the default name but this oddity is causing unnecessary
> >issues with at least the RTEMS configurery.
The problem that hits RTEMS actually is an autoconf problem:
autoconf > 2.13 tries to guess on EXEEXT by compiling a c-file without
any compiler argument: $CC conftest.c
Using i960-*-gcc's in autoconfiscated source-trees, this leaves b.outs
around each time a configure-script is run (Autoconf considers 'a.out'
and cleans them up).
> > Is there an easy
> >way to change this so it defaults to a.out like everything else?
> >Would this cause grief?
>
> Intel changed the a.out object file format, called the result b.out, and then
> changed the output file name to b.out to make it clear that it wasn't an a.out
> file. However, there was never any real need to do that, since we use the
> file name a.out for COFF and ELF without trouble.
>
> See OBJ_DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FILE_NAME in gas/config/obj-bout.h. This is the only
> file that uses that macro. We could just eliminate the macro to solve the
> problem.
>
> Changing it would mean a minor incompatibility with the Intel GNU960 tools
> which they still distribute, and which will continue to emit b.out files.
> There are probably b.out file name assumptions in a few other misc places,
> like dejagnu, and probably in some other embedded OSes also.
> http://developer.intel.com/design/i960/patches/index.htm
If I read all this correctly, it isn't only i960-*-gcc which produces
'b.out', but other i960-compilers do so, too.
=> autoconf probably needs to be extended.
Ralf