[PATCH] MIPS/Gas: Support .L/$ as the mark of local symbol

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Mon, 5 Feb 2024, YunQiang Su wrote:

> In as.texi, there are lines:
>   A local symbol is any symbol beginning with certain local
>   label prefixes. By default, the local label prefix is
>   @samp{.L} for ELF systems or @samp{L} for traditional a.out
>   systems, but each target may have its own set of local
>   label prefixes.
> 
> Let's support it for MIPS:
> 1) For OldABI, GCC uses "$" to mark local symbols, and
>    for NewABI, ".L" is used. So let's support both for
>    OldABI, and ".L" only for NewABI.
> 2) Emit an fatal error, if a local symbol is used, while
>    not defined, just like LLVM does.

 I gather you want to avoid a case of an undefined reference making it to 
output for a symbol whose name suggests its a local label, right?

 But that seems like material for the generic part of GAS rather than the 
MIPS backend only (and then specifically SVR4 PIC only and not non-PIC or 
VxWorks, according to your code as submitted), so that all targets behave 
consistently, and I can't see e.g. i386 GAS doing it.

 So a question raises: what problem are you trying to solve?  Can you give 
us a piece of code that you think is handled incorrectly by GAS, and why?

  Maciej