[Debian-ports-devel] FTBFS caused by fun with -fPIC/-fPIE

[Michael Cree]

Hi Tino,

On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 10:06:46PM +0100, Tino Mettler wrote:
> my package syncevolution FTBFS on alpha[1]. It looks like the culprit is 
> in the libsynthesis package. The libsynthesissdk.a is created from objects 
> built with -fPIE, but just on alpha[2].

I see it compiles objects twice, once with -fPIC and once with -fPIE, and
it links the -fPIC compiled objects into the shared library and the -fPIE
objects into the static library (if I have followed the log correctly).
That seems sensible.

> This seems to cause an error when linked with objects build with -PIC.
> 
> How should I handle this? Is this a toolchain bug on alpha? Is it caused
> by a bug in upstream software?

Release arches (but not the ports arches) were switched to compile all
executables with -fPIE by default by gcc-6, and I have seem some discussion  
that dpkg now sets -fPIE for all arches, but there has been some fallout
from that.  But I don't know what the issues are.  CCed the
debian-ports-devel list to see if someone can enlighten us.

Cheers
Michael.