executable stack flag

[Jens Petersen]

Hi,

We noticed [1] in Fedora that ghc (7.4 and 7.6) are linking executables
(again [2]) with the executable stack flag set. I haven't starting looking
at the ghc code yet but wanted to ask first if it is intentional/necessary?
 (ghc-7.0 doesn't seem to do this.) Having the flag set is considered a bit
of a security risk so it would be better if all generated executable did
not have it set.

I did some very basic testing of various executables, clearing their
flags [3] and they all seemed to run ok without the executable stack flag
set but I can't claim to have tested very exhaustively. (I thought perhaps
it might be related to TemplateHaskell for example but even those
executables seem to work, though I am sure I have not exercised all the
code paths.)

Does someone know the current status of this?
Will anything break if the flag is not set?
Is it easy to patch ghc to not set the flag?
Does it only affect the NCG backend?

Thanks, Jens

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=973512
[2] http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/703
[3] using "execstack -c"
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