Bug#1057664: unshield: FTBFS on hppa - md5/libmd5.a(md5c.c.o) needs to compiled with -fPIC

[John David Anglin]

On 2023-12-13 1:25 p.m., Simon McVittie wrote:
> On Wed, 06 Dec 2023 at 21:15:51 +0000, John David Anglin wrote:
>> /usr/bin/ld: md5/libmd5.a(md5c.c.o): relocation R_PARISC_DPREL21L can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC
> On all release architectures and (as far as I'm aware) most ports
> architectures, everything is compiled as PIC by default, making this a
> non-bug. I've lost track of whether it is dpkg, gcc, binutils or some
> combination of all three that is responsible for setting this up;
> the list of pie_archs in gcc-13's d/rules.defs might be relevant?
>
> If you would like hppa to be in a position to keep up with the release
> architectures, I would recommend making a similar change to the toolchain
> for hppa, rather than dealing with PIC/non-PIC on a package-by-package
> basis.
Although I understand that it would be a good idea to be compatible with the release
architectures, I don't think we can make this ABI change.  I'm fairly certain that it will
break a few packages that use non-pic calls for performance on hppa.  It would also
result in larger and slower code - not great on a 32-bit architecture.

I don't understand what's the big deal about adding -fPIC to gcc's options when building
position independent code.  Thousands of other packages do it.

Regards,
Dave

-- 
John David Anglin  dave.anglin at bell.net