On 3/1/2011 6:22 PM, Anthony G. Basile wrote: > On 03/01/2011 03:02 PM, pagee...@freemail.hu wrote: >> On 28 Feb 2011 at 15:39, Daniel Reidy wrote: >> >>> On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 5:58 PM, <pagee...@freemail.hu> 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.
There is no point in keeping it. This discussion has mostly been about reassuring people with less intimate knowledge of the AMD64 ABI of that fact :)
