On Wed, 17 Jul 2013, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote: > > I was a bit surprised that a change to the NaN format requires a change > > to the dynamic linker, but I suppose that's the consequence of forcing > > every ELF object to fall on one side of the fence? > > Yes, the dynamic linker has to enforce NAN2008 ELF file header flag > compatibility among the modules loaded. The file name has to change to > avoid accidentally loading an executable with a pre-NAN2008 dynamic linker > that wouldn't enforce that requirement.
And, whereas any glibc binaries are definitely built for one or the other NaN format, and the format affects various of the interfaces to glibc, none of the interfaces to glibc are affected by the ABS/MAC bits; it's perfectly possible to have one of glibc and a binary using it built to use ABS2008 or MAC2008, and the other built for the common subset (longer code sequences for ABS, avoiding MAC instructions whose semantics change - or, for that matter, using the soft-float ABI, which obviously is only affected by the NaN changes). So only the NaN changes affect the interface to glibc in an inherently incompatible way, and only those changes require a different dynamic linker name. -- Joseph S. Myers jos...@codesourcery.com
