Re: [PATCH] BZ #5784: Build libpthread.a with ld -r

["Joseph S. Myers" <joseph at codesourcery dot com>]

On Thu, 6 Sep 2012, Roland McGrath wrote:

> Given the severe practical problems of trying to rely on new linker
> features, I think due diligence requires that we understand very
> thoroughly the practical problems biting today and look for ways to
> address them without either depending on new linker features or
> severely bloating every static -lpthread link.

I think people doing such links today are already using --whole-archive to 
get them to work, so the bloat isn't really new.  Static links generally 
are pretty bloated - the overheads associated with static linking of 
trivial programs are huge - but a baseline where they do at least work 
reliably (where the testsuite failures identified by HJ are fixed, so that 
a --disable-shared build gets clean test results) is probably a better 
basis for reducing the bloat than one with lots of bugs.

That said, I'd certainly be happier if a much more in-depth analysis of 
what the static libpthread issues are - what the cases are where only a 
subset of objects are brought in, and which other objects being missing 
causes problems - were posted to justify any change.  We "know" that such 
links are broken, but don't have a clear self-contained explanation of the 
details to justify the patch.  Maybe linking a smaller subset of objects 
with -r would suffice, for example?

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com