Building a cross binutils for Solaris/x86 target

[Alex Bennee]

Hi,

One of the toolchains we use at work is a Solaris/x86 target hosted on
Linux/x86. One of my colleagues hacked up binutils 2.16.1 to enable it
to link a Solaris binary.

I'm in the process of porting them 2.17 and would very much like to
submit the patches upstream if I can do them neatly. However my autoconf
magic is a little rusty.

In the BFD the linker is specified in elf64-x86-64.c as "/lib/ld64.so.1"
when on Solaris is needs to be in "/lib/amd64/ld.so.1". Are there any
config variables passed to the C code that I can use to #ifdef this?

I had a brief scan through config.h but couldn't see anything helpful.

Regards,

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Post by Alex Bennee
One of the toolchains we use at work is a Solaris/x86 target hosted on
Linux/x86. One of my colleagues hacked up binutils 2.16.1 to enable it
to link a Solaris binary.
I'm in the process of porting them 2.17 and would very much like to
submit the patches upstream if I can do them neatly. However my autoconf
magic is a little rusty.
In the BFD the linker is specified in elf64-x86-64.c as "/lib/ld64.so.1"
when on Solaris is needs to be in "/lib/amd64/ld.so.1". Are there any
config variables passed to the C code that I can use to #ifdef this?
I had a brief scan through config.h but couldn't see anything helpful.

This isn't properly expressed as an autoconf test. Autoconf tests can
only test for host features. You are talking about a target feature.
The way to implement this would be to clone the x86_64 target and just
change the interpreter string. Then make your new target the default
in config.bfd.

Alternatively, GNU/Linux has the same issue. The way it is handled
there is to arrange for gcc to always pass the appropriate
-dynamic-linker option when it invokes the linker. That is the way to
go if you always use gcc.

Ian

[Alex Bennee]

Post by Alex Bennee
One of the toolchains we use at work is a Solaris/x86 target hosted on
Linux/x86.

<snip>

Post by Alex Bennee
In the BFD the linker is specified in elf64-x86-64.c as "/lib/ld64.so.1"
when on Solaris is needs to be in "/lib/amd64/ld.so.1". Are there any
config variables passed to the C code that I can use to #ifdef this?

<snip>

This isn't properly expressed as an autoconf test. Autoconf tests can
only test for host features. You are talking about a target feature.
The way to implement this would be to clone the x86_64 target and just
change the interpreter string. Then make your new target the default
in config.bfd.

You mean create something like elf64-solaris-x86-64.c as a clone of the
original elf64-x86-64.c?

It does seem a little like a sledgehammer approach. Scanning through the
directory it looks like BFD is trying to keep the processor dependant
stuff purely that, dependant on the processor.

However if a patch creating a new variant and associated files is
acceptable to the binutils maintainers I'm happy to do that.

Alternatively, GNU/Linux has the same issue. The way it is handled
there is to arrange for gcc to always pass the appropriate
-dynamic-linker option when it invokes the linker. That is the way to
go if you always use gcc.

I shall investigate if I can build the OpenSolaris linker on a Linux
host. Otherwise I may have to go for remotely using a target machine to
link the final result.

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

Post by Alex Bennee
You mean create something like elf64-solaris-x86-64.c as a clone of the
original elf64-x86-64.c?

No. Take a look at the "FreeBSD support" comment at the bottom of
elf64-x86-64.c.

[Michael Wetherell]

Post by Alex Bennee
One of the toolchains we use at work is a Solaris/x86 target hosted
on Linux/x86. One of my colleagues hacked up binutils 2.16.1 to
enable it to link a Solaris binary.
I'm in the process of porting them 2.17 and would very much like to
submit the patches upstream if I can do them neatly. However my
autoconf magic is a little rusty.
In the BFD the linker is specified in elf64-x86-64.c as
"/lib/ld64.so.1" when on Solaris is needs to be in
"/lib/amd64/ld.so.1". Are there any config variables passed to the C
code that I can use to #ifdef this?
I had a brief scan through config.h but couldn't see anything
helpful.

Hi,

It should be working already, did you try a recent version?

Regards,
Mike

[Alex Bennee]

Post by Alex Bennee
One of the toolchains we use at work is a Solaris/x86 target hosted
on Linux/x86. One of my colleagues hacked up binutils 2.16.1 to
enable it to link a Solaris binary.

<snip>
Hi,
It should be working already, did you try a recent version?

Erm, latest release 2.17. Is this something in CVS?

Regards,
Mike

[Michael Wetherell]

Post by Alex Bennee

Post by Michael Wetherell
It should be working already, did you try a recent version?

Erm, latest release 2.17. Is this something in CVS?

Yes try the CVS or a snapshot like binutils-070315.tar.bz2 from
ftp://sourceware.org/pub/binutils/snapshots.

Regards,
Mike