> >I then supped today's sources and tried to build them.  They failed
 > >because the __warn_references macro uses the __attribute__ keyword of
 > >gcc applied to a section... and the gcc that ships in the source tree
 > >doesn't define ASM_OUPUT_SECTION_NAME for mips, and thus fails
 > >miserably to compile the backwards-compatibility files of libc.
 > 
 > Short anwser: because the FSF hasn't ever doen anything with the
 > patches that add __warn_references support, and the person who
 > wrote the perl script that pulls  FSF gcc distributions into the tree
 > never folded  the relevant patches into the perl script.

Well, it's more like we were too late for the 2.7 series, and 2.8 is
really really late...  The ASM_OUTPUT_SECTION_NAME stuff is in
config/mips/netbsd.h in the GCC snapshots, and has been so for
a long time.

  -  Arne H. J.
PS: Don't blame yourself, Jonathan, you're free to blame me on this one :-)