stabilizing hash usage (was Re: ARM: Fix generation of older veneers)

[Hans-Peter Nilsson <hp at bitrange dot com>]

On Tue, 24 Mar 2009, Christophe LYON wrote:
> On 24.03.2009 16:41, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> >
> > Oh, there's a hash table traverse in there - that would explain it
> > indeed.  Maybe there's some way we can stabilize the traversal order?
> > While I'm on the subject, this is true of all hash table traversals in
> > BFD.  Should we allow traversing a symbol hash table (at least, an ELF
> > hash table) in some sorted order - and would it be infinitely painful
> > to get right?
> >
>
> Well... it sounds like a good idea, but probably a large amount of work as it
> would probably impact many tests on many targets. But if you have some spare
> time.... :-)

A voice to the contrary: stabilizing output caused by hash-table
traversals (such that e.g. adding a symbol doesn't cause the
whole symbol-table to be rearranged) seems worthy of a "little"
test-suite trouble.  I'll do my part of that. ;)

brgds, H-P