A very "strange" bug in gcc 2.96

[Ian Lance Taylor]

   From: Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@cygnus.com>
   Date: 22 May 2000 04:33:06 -0300

   On May 22, 2000, Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com> wrote:

   > "H . J . Lu" <hjl@lucon.org> writes:
   >> * config/tc-i386.c (md_estimate_size_before_relax): Don't
   >> relax external symbols.

   > Any change must be conditional based on a flag (which should be off by
   > default).  If you simply generate long references you make it
   > impossible to write good code.

   Yup.  This must be the reason why Solaris' assembler supports the
   option `-K PIC'.

For SPARC Solaris, the -K PIC option directs the assembler to generate
a different set of relocs.  On the i386, the different relocs are
generated using instruction modifiers like @PLT.

Ian