This is a BETA release of a completely rewritten GNU linker. It is distributed with other "binary utilities" which should be in ../binutils. See ../binutils/README for more general notes, including where to send bug reports. There are many new features of the linker: * The linker uses a Binary File Descriptor library (../bfd) that it uses to read and write object files. This helps insulate the linker itself from the format of object files. * The linker support a number of different object file formats. It can even handle multiple formats at once: Read two input formats and write a third. * The linker can be configured for cross-linking. * The linker contains a control language. * There is a user manual (ld.texinfo), as well as the beginnings of an internals manual (ldint.texinfo). Installation ============ See ../binutils/README. If you want to make a cross-linker, you may want to specify a different search path of -lfoo libraries than the default. You can do this by setting the LIB_PATH variable in ./Makefile. To build just the linker, make the target all-ld. Porting to a new target ======================= See the ldint.texinfo manual. Reporting bugs etc =========================== See ../binutils/README. Known problems ============== HP/UX 9.01 has a shell bug that causes the linker scripts to be generated incorrectly. The symptom of this appears to be "fatal error - scanner input buffer overflow" error messages. There are various workarounds to this: * Build and install bash, and build with "make SHELL=bash". * Update to a version of HP/UX with a working shell (e.g., 9.05). * Replace "(. ${srcdir}/scripttempl/${SCRIPT_NAME}.sc)" in genscripts.sh with "sh ${srcdir}..." (no parens) and make sure the emulparams script used exports any shell variables it sets.