Re: ld fails to link if library order is reversed

[Nilmoni Deb]

On Mon, 7 Mar 2005, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:

> Nilmoni Deb <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > Lets say I am running the following command
> >
> >     gcc z.o -lX -lY -o z
> >
> > and libX.a depends on a function that is defined in libY.a then the order
> > of linking appears to be important. While the previous command works, the
> > next one (with order reversed) will fail:
> >
> >     gcc z.o -lY -lX -o z
> >
> > This problem has been observed with binutils version 2.10.91. I would
> > think that ld should look back when resolving dependencies.
>
> This is correct and documented behaviour.  All Unix linkers behave
> this way.

In other words, its a feature, not a bug. It seems that the ICC (intel
cc) on linux does not have this feature.

Just wondering why not looking backwards (for ld) is considered desirable.

thanks...

>
> Ian
>