This is a BETA release of a completely rewritten GNU linker.
It is distributed with other "binary utilities" which should
be in ../binutils.  See ../binutils/README for more general notes,
including where to send bug reports.

There are many new features of the linker:

* The linker uses a Binary File Descriptor library (../bfd)
  that it uses to read and write object files.  This helps
  insulate the linker itself from the format of object files.

* The linker support a number of different object file
  formats.  It can even handle multiple formats at once:
  Read two input formats and write a third.

* The linker can be configured for cross-linking.

* The linker contains a control language.

* There is a user manual (ld.texinfo), as well as the
  beginnings of an internals manual (ldint.texinfo).

Installation
============

See ../binutils/README.

If you want to make a cross-linker, you may want to specify
a different search path of -lfoo libraries than the default.
You can do this by setting the LIB_PATH variable in ./Makefile.

To build just the linker, make the target all-ld.

Porting to a new target
=======================

See the Porting chapter in the ldint.texinfo manual.

Reporting bugs etc
===========================
See ../binutils/README.

Known problems
==============

HP/UX 9.01 has a shell bug that causes the linker scripts to be
generated incorrectly.  The symptom of this appears to be "fatal error
- scanner input buffer overflow" error messages.  There are various
workarounds to this:
  * Build and install bash, and build with "make SHELL=bash".
  * Update to a version of HP/UX with a working shell (e.g., 9.05).
  * Replace "(. ${srcdir}/scripttempl/${SCRIPT_NAME}.sc)" in
    genscripts.sh with "sh ${srcdir}..." (no parens) and make sure the
    emulparams script used exports any shell variables it sets.