DragonFly has had binutils 2.24 and 2.25 both available for some time. 2.24 has been taken out and replaced by binutils 2.27, thanks to Rimvydas Jasinskas.
The 2.25 version was and still is installed by default. If you want to try out 2.27 instead, WORLD_BINUTILSVER=binutils227 is what you need. I didn’t test that, of course. The binutils changelog will tell you what’s different in 2.27.
Can we expect the gcc 4.7 branch to be replaced by the 6.x branch sometime soon?
what about elftoolchain?
I haven’t heard anyone mention an intent to do anything with elftoolchain, though I wouldn’t necessarily know.
DragonFly usually has two working compilers in base at a time; I think gcc 4.7 will be replaced with clang. I’m not doing the work, so take my assumptions with a grain of salt.
Enabling “partial” RELRO by default would be good.
I’d personally like to see -Wl,-z,relro,-z,now and -fstack-protector-strong enabled everywhere in base and DPorts. HardenedBSD already does it.
If you try it now – at least with base – what happens?
To be honest, I don’t know. I won’t be in front of a DragonFly system for a few weeks.