On 03/01/2011 03:02 PM, [email protected] wrote: > On 28 Feb 2011 at 15:39, Daniel Reidy wrote: > >> On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 5:58 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: >>> that's actually not the intended use of the PIC USE flag, we wanted it >>> originally >>> to enable configuring/compiling position independent code for packages >>> where one >>> wanted to make a tradeoff between speed/security (i think php was one such >>> app, >>> even without any hand written asm code). >>> >>> so with USE=pic you were supposed to get a textrel free, but potentially >>> slower >>> binary (partly because of the PIC overhead on i386 and partly because >>> sometimes >>> it meant using the C implementation of some algo instead of hand written >>> asm). >> >> So if I understand this correctly, we should now be turning off PIC on >> Gentoo-Hardened systems running on AMD64. What about the non-hardened >> variety, such as my desktop, that is only running a "stock" version of >> Gentoo Sources without hardened features? > > USE=pic should have exactly 0 effect on amd64 because the arch and the ELF ABI > makes PIC zero cost basically. if some package manages to get around the rules > somehow, it's a bug in that package, treat it accordingly ;). >
This was Zorry's point. So if it has no effect, why keep it? I say let's remove it. -- Anthony G. Basile, Ph.D. Gentoo Developer
