Re: [PATCH] Makefile: remove the NO_R_TO_GCC_LINKER flag

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: May 17, 2019, 00:23 UTC
Message-ID: <20190517002303.GB13525@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqd0ki3s0q.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 08:21:09AM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > Far be it from me to care about AIX, but it seems like this is ripe for
> > regressions, because we don't know which platforms were relying on "-R"
> > instead of "-Wl,-rpath", and now everybody will be using the latter by
> > default.
> 
> I do not have a stake in AIX, either, but I had the same reaction.
> 
> Those who found having to give NO_R_TO_GCC_LINKER=NoThanks annoying
> could have passed CC_LD_DYNPATH=-Wl,-rpath instead, but that is not
> much shorter or sweeter X-<; with this change, they do not have to
> do anything, but those who are broken can pass CC_LD_DYNPATH=-R to
> unbreak it.  So it may not be the end of the world, but this move
> certainly smells like robbing non-GCC users to pay GCC users to me.

Thanks, I wasn't quite clear on whether there was an escape hatch for people who were broken (I took Ævar's "perhaps we should follow this up" meaning we needed to add new knobs, but it is really just "perhaps we should set this existing knob by default on AIX"). So that at least quells the worst of my worries.

After that, I agree it's now just a question of the default. I don't have a sense whether the majority is helped or hurt here (I admit that I did not even know about these flags, despite compiling with gcc for the past 13 years, so possibly everybody was perfectly happy with the existing behavior).

-Peff