Why does arm-linux-androideabi-gcc enforce -fpic?

Question

I was surprised to see that gcc enforces code to be position independent, even if such flag wasn\'t provided explicitly in the command line.

I suspect it might have to d

Answer 1

Starting with Android 4.1, Google is forcing full ASLR to overcome common security exploits, see this article for more details.

Position Independent Code (PIC) is required for this to work but also PIE (Position Independent Executable) too.