[RFC] Adding --skip-mismatch option to ld

[Ian Lance Taylor]

   Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 16:20:34 -0700
   From: Richard Henderson <rth@cygnus.com>

   On Wed, Jun 09, 1999 at 06:52:46PM -0400, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
   > If --skip-mismatch is the default, the linker finds an entirely
   > different libfoo.a later in the search path.  The link succeeds, but
   > I'm using the wrong code.  My changes aren't in there, and I can't
   > figure out why.  I have a serious debugging problem ahead of me.

   Perhaps --skip-mismatch, while the default, also warns by default,
   to be supressed by --no-warn-mismatch (for masochists)?

I could accept such a patch.

However, I continue to believe that it is better to avoid increasing
the confusion.  Making the linker smarter often seems like a sensible
approach, but my experience is that it tends to lead to unanticipated
trouble.  It's always better to have simple tools with transparent
behaviour.  There is a place for smart programs that try to guess what
you mean, but not in the binutils.

Ian