Re: status of PIE support?

Kees Cook
2008-05-08T18:19:31Z

On Thu, May 08, 2008 at 01:37:20PM -0400, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> 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.

I'd love to help get it into mainline, but my knowledge of gdb internals
is rather poor currently. I figure I can help perhaps with coordination
and certainly with testing.

Jan, would getting PIE support into mainline gdb be something you would
have time for?

> - the submitter has to be able to justify any line of the patch that
> does not make sense to the reviewer

This is probably where I'd get hung up, shouting "it's magic!" :)

> 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 :-)

Yeah, I assume that I'll end up learning gdb internals eventually, and be
a bit more helpful then, but that won't be in the near-term. That said,
it's been 5 years since Elena Zannoni's original work, so I'm hoping
some folks will step up and help review the existing patches with me --
they clearly have some merit.

Thanks!

-Kees

--
Kees Cook @outflux.net