Question about dumping emacs under Solaris

[Ali Bahrami]

Hello,

   I have a question about how emacs is dumped under
Solaris. In the file emacs/src/s/sol-2-6.h:

        /* Handle Solaris 2.6.  */

        #include "sol2-5.h"

        #if 0 /* dldump does not handle all the extensions used by GNU ld.  */
        #undef UNEXEC
        #define UNEXEC unexsol.o
        #endif
        
This ifdef prevents the unexsol.c code, containing a call
to dldump(), from being used. Instead, the generic ELF unexec
code is used. Looking at the RCS revisions, I see that dldump()
was disabled in revision 1.3 of the file, dating from
September 13, 2002.

Can anyone shed any light on what GNU ld extensions are not
properly handled by the Solaris dldump()? I know that 2002
was a while ago, and possibly no one remembers, but it
would be helpful to know what went wrong.

I work at Sun, on the linker. We've discussed this, and are at
a loss as to what the problem might be. dldump() is pretty
generic, and nothing leaps out as being unable to support GNU
ld objects. There are some differences between the ELF objects
produced by the Solaris and GNU, but they tend to be pretty
compatible for the most part.

In addition to satisfying my curiosity, I may be able to fix
whatever is missing. Any such changes would of course be
released with OpenSolaris as free source code.

Thanks for your help.

- Ali