-fPIC

I didn't know what -fPIC meant in gcc invocations; I was seeing it when messing around with sqlite extension compilation. this SO response is helpful:

Position Independent Code means that the generated machine code is not dependent on being located at a specific address in order to work.

E.g. jumps would be generated as relative rather than absolute.

Pseudo-assembly:

PIC: This would work whether the code was at address 100 or 1000

100: COMPARE REG1, REG2
101: JUMP_IF_EQUAL CURRENT+10
...
111: NOP

Non-PIC: This will only work if the code is at address 100

100: COMPARE REG1, REG2
101: JUMP_IF_EQUAL 111
...
111: NOP