Re: stabs support in binutils, gcc, and gdb

[David Edelsohn <dje.gcc@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 2:53 AM, Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com> wrote:
>> > Can you please clarify what "GNU ld is not completely usable" means?
>> > Is that referring to DWARF support? to compatibility with specific AIX
>> > releases? to compatibility with AIX DWARF feature?
>>
>> Sorry, I meant what "GNU ld is now completely usable" means because I
>> believe that it actually is NOT completely usable on AIX.
>
> AdaCore has successfully switched to GNU ld on AIX, tested on AIX
> version 5.x and 7.x. We use a version derived from an old HEAD,
> I believe, but the latest release might have all the necessary
> changes. I cannot tell you that it's perfect, and some options
> provided by the native linker might not be implemented (particularly
> the options relating to TOCs). But we released GNAT Pro 7.0.1/7.0.2
> using GNU ld early last year, and I don't remember seeing any real
> problem being reported.
>
> We had to do some changes, and make some fixes, mostly done by
> Tristan, and normally they should have been contributed to the
> FSF tree. Overall, I think we're pretty happy with GNU ld as
> of now.

It does not look like the changes were merged into the FSF tree.  This
also does not support some of the more recent AIX features added to
GCC.

I also infer that Adacore continues to use the AIX assembler, not GNU as.

Thanks, David