Does one still need to use -fPIC when compiling with GCC?

Question

On gcc target machines, when one wanted to compile a shared library, one would need to specify -fpic or -fPIC to get things to work correcly. This is because by default absolute

Answer 1

I agree with you: in many cases the -fpic/-fPIC options are almost redundant, I do however use them to ensure:

• portability (never sure what particular OS/kernel will be available)
• backwards compatibility: with those options it ensures the behaviour you want on older kernels
• habit - Hard things to break :)
• compliance with older codebases that may require it