------- Comment #4 from matz at gcc dot gnu dot org 2008-05-08 15:13 ------- Hmm, actually I sort of agree with HJ. It's a global (and unhidden) definition, which very well can be replaced by a different definition at runtime. In particular that will happen for instance if the global data is defined in a shared lib, but referenced from the executable. A COPY reloc will be created and the content of the variable will be taken from the executable. That of course will have the same value as in the shared lib, so that difference doesn't matter.
The only way by which we could declare the current behaviour valid, is if we declare several definitions of global const variables with different value as invalid. The C standard isn't concerned with different shared object, so we can't extract such declaration out of it. The ELF standard doesn't say anything about this, so the default rules apply, which would require _not_ hardcoding the constant. -- http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=35501
