Use of SHT_GROUP ELF section type by GNU as on IRIX

[Albert Chin]

I'm running into trouble building GCC 4.0.2 on IRIX 6.5.26m with GNU
as (binutils 2.16.1) and IRIX ld (MIPSpro 7.4.3m). The problem is
documented here:
  http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24345

In short, the IRIX linker is failing with the following error building
libstdc++.so:
  ld32: FATAL   2  : Internal: at ../../ld/section_type.c In load_info()
  unknown section type

Displaying the section headers of one of the object files, I see:
  $ elfdump -h .libs/allocator-inst.o
.libs/allocator-inst.o:

          **** SECTION  HEADER  TABLE ****
[No]   Type                  Addr       Offset     Size        Name
       Link       Info       Adralgn    Entsize    Flags

[1]    0x11                  0          0x34       0x8         .group
       43         0x25       0x4        0x4        0x00000000 

[2]    0x11                  0          0x3c       0x8         .group
       43         0x26       0x4        0x4        0x00000000 
...
[13]   SHT_PROGBITS          0          0xa0       0           .text
       0          0          0x10       0          0x00000006 ALLOC EXECINSTR 

[14]   SHT_PROGBITS          0          0xa0       0           .data
       0          0          0x10       0          0x00000003 WRITE ALLOC 
...


Looking at config/obj-elf.c, I see the creation of an SHT_GROUP
section type. Is GNU as on IRIX suppose to be compatible with IRIX ld?
According to <elf.h>, IRIX ld supports only 11 section types
(SHT_GROUP == 17). I think that's the reason for the ld error above.

Does GNU as really need to generate the SHT_GROUP sections?

-- 
albert chin (china@thewrittenword.com)