> Is performance such an issue if it's just c++rt0.o that's compiled with
> -fPIC?  There's not that much that's done in there, and it only happens
> at program start-up and shut-down.  If I'm not missing something I'd say
> b) is a sure winner here...
> 

This does not affect start-up time.  But it does cost at run-time:
one extra instruction for each reference to some global data item.

A simple benchmark test shows that the overhead is measurable:
about 5% for a load-global-data bound pic module. (measured on
a 50Mhz Sparcstation 5).

-pk