MIPS branches to external symbols

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

This is a topic which has come up every year or so...

Current versions of binutils disallow branches, which use a 16-bit
shifted-by-2 pc-relative relocation, to both external symbols.  I would
like to turn this feature back on.

I've been checking the archives for discussion of this and the most
recent I see is:
  http://sources.redhat.com/ml/binutils/2003-02/msg00447.html

This re-enabled branches to global symbols in the same object.  I can't
locate the discussion of the remaining problems with re-enabling this
for external symbols.  Can someone give me a pointer, or a good reason
to disallow this?

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz