ELF common symbols

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Alan Modra <amodra@bigpond.net.au> writes:

> Why don't we give ELF common symbols type STT_COMMON?  According to
> the ELF spec, that would seem to be the right thing to do.  I'm not
> proposing we make the change as that might affect glibc's ld.so,
> just curious.

STT_COMMON isn't in the original ELF ABI.  The original ABI has
SHN_COMMON, but no STT_COMMON.

STT_COMMON was introduced to the binutils with this patch:

1999-12-27  Nick Clifton  <nickc@cygnus.com>

	* common.h: Upgrade to match Oct4, 1999 Draft ELF ABI Spec.

My reading of
    http://www.sco.com/developers/gabi/latest/ch4.symtab.html
is that it would be correct for us to use STT_COMMON for common
symbols.

Ian