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

You never needed to generate separate .o files. Always specify the compiler options to generate portable code (typically -fPIC).

On some systems, the compiler may be configured to force this option on, or set it by default. But it doesn't hurt to specify it anyway.

Note: One hopes that where PC-relative addressing is supported and performs well, that -fPIC uses that mode rather than dedicating an extra register.