From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: TODO additions Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 06:32:40 -0500 Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: <200210291902.g9TJ2AY18220@rum.cs.yale.edu> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1037201254 21727 80.91.224.249 (13 Nov 2002 15:27:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 15:27:34 +0000 (UTC) Cc: schwab@suse.de, monnier+gnu/emacs@rum.cs.yale.edu, emacs-devel@gnu.org Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 18BzC9-00043c-00 for ; Wed, 13 Nov 2002 16:12:45 +0100 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 18BzO6-00066k-00 for ; Wed, 13 Nov 2002 16:25:06 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.10) id 18Bw1H-0000dm-00; Wed, 13 Nov 2002 06:49:19 -0500 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.10) id 18BvlH-0006IM-00 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 13 Nov 2002 06:32:47 -0500 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.10) id 18BvlB-0006FJ-00 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 13 Nov 2002 06:32:45 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.10) id 18BvlA-0006ES-00 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 13 Nov 2002 06:32:40 -0500 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.10) id 18BvlA-0002hS-00; Wed, 13 Nov 2002 06:32:40 -0500 Original-To: d.love@dl.ac.uk In-reply-to: (message from Dave Love on 11 Nov 2002 20:25:07 +0000) Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:9362 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:9362 > ORDINARY_LINK is one of those symbols. Right now it is defined in > certain *.h files. Part of this proposal is that Autoconf should > define it directly. What proposal? I haven't said that, at least. Someone proposed to eliminate the *.h files and determine the information with Autoconf. That means either defining ORDINARY_LINK with Autoconf or eliminating it entirely. If nobody is advocating that now, then there is no need to argue about it. [Why would Emacs need to be linked differently from any other program? I don't know "Why would it?" but I can answer the question "Why does it?" Emacs needed to use its own special crt0.o file and that required calling ld directly. At first it was always done that way. Later on some systems we arranged to use cc. So we added the ORDINARY_LINK flag for those systems. The question is relevant if you are thinking of implementing a replacement for this code, which would always use cc to link. I think that would be a nice simplification if it works, but hard to do. Unless and until that change is made, we need to keep supporting the use of ORDINARY_LINK, which means that one way or another configure.in must decide the value of ORDINARY_LINK.