Re: -fpic vs. -fPIC - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Bruce Momjian
Subject Re: -fpic vs. -fPIC
Date
Msg-id 200311291826.hATIQmW11894@candle.pha.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: -fpic vs. -fPIC  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-hackers
Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> >> The best I have been able to tell is that none of our .so's are anywhere
> >> near large enough to require -fPIC.
> 
> > One question would be what happens when it fails?  Does it fail visibly
> > so we would hear about it?  If so, we can take the risk.
> 
> Yes, you'd get a link failure.  On the platforms I've seen it on (HPUX
> at least, on an old project with .so's in the dozens-of-megabytes range)
> the error message is pretty specific that you should have used -fPIC.

Great.

In general, I am not sure we are always explicit that taking risks is
contingent on how the user will see a possible failure.  For example, if
-fpic generated SELECT query failures randomly, that would be a much
less attractive risk than a link failure.

Risk is a function of both the probability, and the _visibility_ of the
failure.

--  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610)
359-1001+  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square,
Pennsylvania19073
 


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