On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 08:08:46AM -0700, Kevin P. Fleming wrote:
> Nico Erfurth wrote:
>> Well, the current patch is far from being complete :)
>> It only supports the dl-interface (there are at least 2 others in the
>> wild) and is only tested on linux.
> If you're going to do this (which I think is a good thing) then you're
> wasting your time if you're not using libtool to do the job. Libtool
> already knows about a large number of platforms, what type of dynamic
> loader (if any) is supported, etc.
[...]
The major problem with libtool is that it seems to be optimized for
broken platforms. E.g. its library-support links a program against all
libraries that are indirectly referenced.
e.g: exim uses functions from libgnutls and is therefore linked against
it. libgnutls itself is linked against libgcrypt. However exim itself does
not use anyfuntions/interfaces from libgcrypt and does not need to be
linked against it if the dynamic linker is powerful enough (e.g on
Linux).
If you completely switched exim to auto*+libtool it would be
unnecessarily linked against libgcrypt, which is a PITA. - If a new
version (soname) of libgcrypt is uploaded and libgnutls is changed to
link against it, you have to unnecessarily recompile exim[1] and any
other software linked against libgnutls instead of only the software
using libgcrypt.
Libtool's dynamic loader support might be better, though.
cu andreas
[1] If you don't you'll have to keep the old libgcrypt around and if
libgcrypt does not use versioned symbols you'll experience funny
crashes.
--
"See, I told you they'd listen to Reason," [SPOILER] Svfurlr fnlf,
fuhggvat qbja gur juveyvat tha.
Neal Stephenson in "Snow Crash"
