>I think that objection is a red herring except for the nops issue

We already rely on the fact that .align pads with nops in other places.  I 
have a feeling it may be documented to do so in fact for GAS at least.

>Or doing some hacks at load time which is horrible but possible. Getting 
>a fixed chip doesnt help people with surface mount IC's

Changing a surface mount StrongARM isn't impossible.  There are plenty of 
companies who will change that sort of chip for you, and it's possible to hand 
solder them if you have a steady hand and a magnifier.  With a BGA package 
things do get slightly more hairy and you're then almost certainly out of the 
do-it-yourself realm - but there are still people who will float that sort of 
part off a board and put a new one down if you need to do so.

In any case the distribution people can include the patch in their compilers 
if they feel it's an important issue, regardless of whether egcs or gcc2 takes 
it.

p.