Ian Lance Taylor <iant@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > There is a great deal one could say about -fPIC. It's hard to know what > should be said in the gcc docs. To me it seems more appropriate in some > document about what PIC really is. Sure, then the gcc doc can say "(see <all-about-pic> for details)"... :) > What happens here is that when using -fPIC symbol interposition is > permitted for any globally visible symbol. That is, the -fPIC code is > presumed to wind up in a shared library. An executable may override any > function in a shared library. The code in the shared library which > calls that function is then expected to call the definition in the > executable instead. It follows that when using -fPIC the compiler may > not inline any call to a globally visible function, because that would > prevent symbol interposition. Hmm, I guess this makes sense. It would definitely be nice to have a more precise description in a document somewhere though. I'd think it would also be good to have a way of disabling this particular side-effect -- e.g., for non-shared-library uses of shared objects, like loadable modules/plugins etc, which presumably don't aim to provide the same guarantees that shared libraries do. [Is there more appropriate place to say these things than gcc-help, btw?] -Miles -- Run away! Run away!
