@berndmohr: This indirectly causes the `libbfd.a` of the loaded `binutils` dependency to be used (required because `Extrae` requires a recent `libbfd.a`), but the `libiberty.a` provided by the system binutils (which generally *is* built with `-fPIC`). That's a bit fishy, to say the least...

One way to get around this is to add the `--disable-shared` configure option to `Extrae`, since that doesn't require that `libiberty.a` is compiled with `-fPIC`. Do you consider that a reasonable way out?

It seems like we'll have to see what the impact would be of building `GCC` (and `binutils`) with `-fPIC`, or even making building with `-fPIC` enabled the default. That would also resolve this issue, but this is not a decision we should take lightly.