I have always thought that the generation of position independent code (PIC) basically only depended on the CPU one is compiling for. However, after reading this in the GCC documentation:
For the 386, GCC supports PIC for System V but not for the Sun 386i.
(stating that the ability to create PIC depends on the operating system), I wondered:
Can GCC create position independent code for freestanding environments, when no operating system is present?