Build system/GCC questions

From: David Abrahams (abrahams_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-06-04 15:55:51

I am trying to understand how best to support shared libraries in the build
system. Several people have mentioned to me that under GCC, DLL source files
should be compiled with -fPIC. Is there any reason not to compile all
targets with -fPIC under GCC? Does it generate less-efficient code? If it's
important to be able to build some targets without -fPIC, it's clear to me
that we need a way of expressing constraints that a target type places on
its build configuration. Also, I assume this constraint is transitive, at
least on any targets that are /statically/ linked to the shared library.
Please enlighten.

Thanks in advance,
Dave