Segher Boessenkool [off-list ref] writes:

On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 05:05:34PM +1000, Michael Ellerman wrote:

quoted

Segher Boessenkool [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Yes, that is why I used the environment variable, all binutils work
with that.  There was no --target option in GNU ar before 2.22.

Yeah, we're not very good at testing with really old binutils, so I
guess we broke that.

I'm inclined to merge this, it doesn't seem to break anything, and it
fixes using --target on old binutils that don't have it.

But we don't set the target any other way either.  I don't think this
will work with a 32-bit toolchain (default target 32 bit) and a 64-bit
kernel, or the other way around.

I think it does, but maybe I'm misunderstanding.

My test setup is:

  ~/linux$ export PATH=/home/toolchains/ppc/gcc-8-branch/powerpc-linux/bin/:$PATH
  ~/linux$ echo "int test(void) { return 2; }" > test.c
  ~/linux$ powerpc-linux-gcc -c test.c 
  ~/linux$ file test.o 
  test.o: ELF 32-bit MSB relocatable, PowerPC or cisco 4500, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped
  ~/linux$ make CROSS_COMPILE=powerpc-linux- -s ppc64le_defconfig
  ~/linux$ make CROSS_COMPILE=powerpc-linux- -s -j 320
  ~/linux$ echo $?
  0

And it's definitely calling ar with no flags, eg:

  rm -f init/built-in.a; powerpc-linux-ar rcSTPD init/built-in.a init/main.o init/version.o init/do_mounts.o init/do_mounts_rd.o init/do_mounts_initrd.o init/do_mounts_md.o init/initramfs.o init/init_task.o

So presumably at some point ar learnt to cope with objects that don't
match its default? (how do I ask it what its default is?)

Then again, does that work at *all* nowadays?  Do we even consider that
important, *should* it work?

Yes and yes. There were a lot of bugs in the kernel makefiles after we
added LE support which prevented a biarch/biendian compiler from working.
But now it does work and we want it to keep working because it means you
can have a single compiler for building 32-bit, 64-bit BE & 64-bit LE.

cheers