Re: PATCH: Return NULL on NULL bfd (Problem with linker with binutils-040414)

["H. J. Lu" <hjl at lucon dot org>]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 04:17:00PM +0100, Nick Clifton wrote:
> Hi H. J.
> 
> >I am having the second thought. bfd_archive_filename was invented for
> >bfd error reporting. It is used as
> > 
> >
> 
> Surely if it is intended for error reporting then it is better that it 
> returns a bogus filename such as "<unknown>" rather than seg-faulting as 
> otherwise the actual error message will never be displayed.
> 


From

http://sources.redhat.com/ml/binutils/2004-04/msg00274.html

If bfd_archive_filename returns NULL, you will get

---
I have confirmed that on line 3637 of elflink.c, old_bfd is null and thus 
the call to bfd_archive_filename cores.    If I have that method return 0 
if abfd is null, it no longer core dumps.   Instead, I get warnings:
/usr/bin/ld: Warning: size of symbol `getpwuid_r@GLIBC_2.0' changed from 
385 in (null) to 392 in /lib/libc.so.6
/usr/bin/ld: Warning: size of symbol `getrlimit@GLIBC_2.0' changed from 59 
in (null) to 58 in /lib/libc.so.6
/usr/bin/ld: Warning: size of symbol `realpath@GLIBC_2.0' changed from 54 
in (null) to 64 in /lib/libc.so.6
---

If people don't scan linker warnings for regression, which I usually
don't, we may not uncover the linker bug for a long time. In this
case, segfault saved us.


H.J.