Re: status of PIE support?

Daniel Jacobowitz
2008-05-08T17:37:43Z

On Wed, May 07, 2008 at 10:45:26PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> Hello! I'm curious what the current status PIE support is?

No status that I know of. No one has been working on it for FSF GDB.

Jan may know more since he maintains the Red Hat packaging.

> What would be required to get this code in shape for a commit? I'm
> currently fairly unfamiliar with gdb internals, but I'm willing to
> learn. :)

My general rules for reviewing patches are:
- they must conform to GNU style guidelines and include changelogs.
This can be tedious, but is not hard - especially not if your
editor supports GNU coding style :-)
- large patches should be broken into separate logical units where
reasonable (this is always a judgement call)
- the submitter and any authors must have FSF copyright assignment
- the submitter has to be able to justify any line of the patch that
does not make sense to the reviewer

Unfortunately, while that's not quite as strict as "you must
understand every line", it's closely related: the more of it a
reviewer has to go figure out on his own, the more work it is to
review the patch, and the harder it will be to find someone with the
time to do it. A good way to handle bits you don't understand is
to remove them and see what breaks; often this isn't practical,
but when it is it's a sign of good tests :-)

--
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery