Linus:
>I suspect there is something broken in the ELF compilers in that case: I
>certainly do _not_ compile as ELF, and I've been using various versions
>of gcc to compile the 1.3.x source trees. If you get a "impossible
>register spill", it's a gcc bug and just saying "compile it as ELF" is
>not the fix, just a work-around.
Can I just step in here to attempt to alleviate the bad rap ELF seems
to be getting on the -kernel list? The problem as I read it was that
he _was_ compiling the kernel in ELF (H J Lu's gcc binaries default to
ELF) but was failing to select the `compile as ELF' option at config
time. I assume saying `no' to CONFIG_KERNEL_ELF won't start putting
-b and -m options to force a.out all over the CFLAGS and LDFLAGS, as
were that the case we'd have seen lots of complaints from users of old
gcc/binutils.
As I say, I'm only guessing, but the problem here seems to be pilot
error (perhaps exacerbated by the lack of big `INSTALLING THIS PACKAGE
WILL AFFECT YOUR COMPILING HABITS FOREVER' signs all over the gcc
2.7.0 binary package release notes), rather than a real bug.
Daniel
-- Daniel.Barlow@sjc.ox.ac.uk http://sable.ox.ac.uk/~jo95004/