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

[Vladimir Simonov]

On 03/17/2010 10:57 AM, Nick Clifton wrote:
> 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
>
>

Hi Nick,

Thank you for your response.

Best regards
Vladimir