Patches to build a shared ELF libbfd.so

[Mike Meissner]

| Hi,
| 
| I have a patch for gas-950304 to build a shared ELF library,
| libbfd.so, which contains both libbfd and libopcode. It cuts
| down the sizes of each ELF binary by several hundred Ks on x86.
| 
| But my patch is just a hack since there is no shared library
| support in binutils. If anyone is interested, I will post
| my patch. BTW, I think it is a very good test for the ELF
| support in binutils if you use the binutils to assembler
| and link itself.

As I recall, this was discussed last summer.  The problem with making
bfd a shared library is that the interfaces aren't as cut and dried as
one would like.  For example, when I was at OSF, we tried to shared
gdb's bfd with gas/ld in the OSF ODE build evironment.  However,
because we had not rev'ed GDB for awhile, the calling sequence for the
disassembling functions had changed, even though the name was the
same.  In the interest of expediency, I kept gdb's version of bfd in
the tree along with the assembler and linkers.

-- 
Michael Meissner, Cygnus Support (East Coast)
Suite 105, 48 Grove Street, Somerville, MA 02144, USA
meissner@cygnus.com,	617-629-3016 (office),	617-629-3010 (fax)