non-conformant ELF symbol table on MIPS?

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2023, Jan Beulich wrote:

> >  There are two kinds of MIPS targets, ones that use the older IRIX symbol 
> > sorting rules and ones that use the newer "traditional" symbol sorting 
> > rules.  The IRIX symbol sorting rules mandate that section symbols precede 
> > all other symbols, see e.g. bfd/elf32-mips.c:mips_elf_sym_is_global.  
> 
> Along the lines of my reply to Ian: This still doesn't explain the
> behavior I observe. What you say is required could still be met without
> violating ELF rules.

 Yes, we could put section symbols first, then local ones, then external 
ones, and it was discussed many years ago, but it would require rather a 
heavy overhaul of generic parts of BFD.  Someone would have to do it just 
to handle a corner case, so it was concluded that it wouldn't be the best 
use of time, which would better be spent on something more important.

  Maciej