RFA/RFC: Enable both gold and ld in a single toolchain

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Vladimir,

> One, may be stupid, question.

Not stupid at - it is perfectly reasonable.

> As I understand gcc checks linker properties in configure scripts
> to adjust code-generation.

Correct.

> You are suggesting to build a toolchain
> with 2 linkers(bfd/gold).

Yes.

> So question, which linker will be used in gcc configure?

The bfd linker, if configuring gcc in a combined source tree along with 
the binutils, otherwise the linker found in the system's search path.

This is actually a bug which I had not considered, albeit a minor one. 
Even if the use configures with --enable-gold or --enable-gold=both/gold 
then the gold sources will *not* be the ones examined for the capability 
tests performed by gcc's configure scripts.  This should not matter 
though, because of ...

> What if another linker has other properties?

That would be bad.

> Are gold and bfd linkers similar in above aspects?

... Yes.  In fact this is one of the main design goals of gold - to be 
able to act as a drop in replacement for ld with all the same features 
and capabilities.

One of the reasons that I created this patch in the first place was that 
I wanted toolchain builders to be able to experiment with the new linker 
(gold) whilst retaining the ability to use the known-good linker (ld.bfd).


Cheers
   Nick