On Mon, Aug 08, 2016 at 01:19:41PM +1000, Nicholas Piggin wrote:

On Sun, 7 Aug 2016 16:40:54 +0200
Sam Ravnborg [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On Sun, Aug 07, 2016 at 11:49:46AM +1000, Stephen Rothwell wrote:

quoted

Hi Sam,

On Sat, 6 Aug 2016 22:10:45 +0200 Sam Ravnborg [off-list ref] wrote:  

quoted

Did you by any chance evalue the use of INPUT in linker files.
Stephen back then (again based on proposal from Alan Modra),
also made an implementation using INPUT.  

The problem with that idea was that (at least for some versions of
binutils in use at the time) we hit a static limit to the number of
object files and ld just stopped at that point. :-(  

The ld bug was caused by opening too many linked definitions files.
We can workaround this by expanding the files.
I gave this a quick spin - see below.

Note - I have no idea if using thin archived or this method is better.
But it seems just wrong to me that we convert to thin archives when
we really do not need to do so.

Note - this was a quick spin. It build fine here and thats it.

Is there a reason to prefer using linker scripts rather than thin
archives? I thought the former was possibly a bit less robust, and
the latter a smaller change for scripts and toolchain in terms
of "almost behaving like an object file".

The only valid reason I can come up with is that it is simpler
to build a list of .o files than it is to generate a number
of thin archives.

I persuaded "linker scripts" mainly because I had the patch floating
and I was triggered by the powerpc discussions to resurface it again.

I don't have a strong preference although do have a couple of
(out of tree) scripts that expect objdump to work on built-in.o

You are likely not alone here.
Unless someone else comes up with any good reason lets stay with
thin archives.

	Sam