RFC: Should we have all targets default to only creating an executable stack when explicitly requested ?

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Jan,

>>     A proposal has been made that all targets should ignore missing
>>     .note.GNU-stack sections, and the linker should only ever create an
>>     executable stack if explicitly requested by one of the two methods
>>     described in the second paragraph.  
> 
> I know of such an application right away. It being used merely for testing
> purposes, I believe it's okay-ish to have an executable stack. 

Does the application link with "-z execstack" ?  If not, why not ?

Just curious really.  I want to know if there are likely to be other
apps out there that use executable stacks, but do not explicitly request
the feature from the linker.

> Hence I'd like to suggest that for
> at least one (better two or three) major releases there be merely a warning
> that the behavior will change, giving people time to silence the warning
> while being able to continue to do their immediate work.

Yeah - after thinking about this a bit more, I agree with you.  I think that
the best thing to do for now would be to extend the new warning message about
automatically created execstacks so that it also says that the feature is going
to be deprecated and then make the change in a couple of releases time.

Cheers
   Nick