AIX4.3.2: problem with 64-bit .o's

[Ian Lance Taylor]

   From: "Bleser, Pascal" <PBleser@atos-group.com>
   Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 13:51:24 +0100

   Now ar works (with binutils 2.9.1, the new "big format" archives
   were not supported), but nm complains about not recognizing 64-bit
   object files (all those *_64.o-files) - it rather looks like warnings,
   because nm goes on and works properly for 32-bit obj-files.
   But after having a look at the bfd code for RS6000, it looks like
   64-bit-objs *are* supported (yes, I've also tried building the bfd
   with --enable-64bit-bfd: it didn't help :( )...

As far as I know, 64 bit AIX objects are not supported.  (On the other
hand, I actually didn't even realize that the new archive format was
supported.)  What do you see in BFD that makes it look like 64 bit AIX
object files are supported?

   Is there anyone on this list working on AIX 4.3.2 who could give me
   some help and share his/her experiences ?
   We're using loats of GNU tools (especially the GCC 2.95.2 compiler
   set for C and C++) on our boxes and it's really a big, big problem
   if we can't get it to work properly.

Well, get ready to do some work.

   BTW, what does the statement
   "   # The configure and build of ld are currently disabled because
       # GNU ld is known to be broken for AIX 4.2 and 4.3 (at least)
       # The symptom is that GDBtk 4.18 fails at startup with a segfault
       # if linked by GNU ld, but not if linked by the native ld."
   mean in binutils-000322/configure.in ?

It means what it says.  The GNU linker does not work on versions of
AIX later than 4.1.5.  The comment describes a way to find a bug.

AIX uses an unusual object file format, the linker is required to do
unusual things, and the documentation is rather poor when it exists at
all.  A lot of the AIX support had to be figured out by reverse
engineering the AIX linker, and by putting the code out there to see
what broke.  I lost interest in doing that after AIX 4.1.5.  I don't
think there has been a substantial change to the AIX linker support in
bfd/xcofflink.c since early 1998.  It would be great if somebody fixed
the linker up to work for later versions of AIX; I don't know of
anybody doing that work.

Ian