Re: Additional link flags for HP aCC and SGI CC

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
> The main barrier to providing a good interface to many of the features
> we are obviously missing is our lack of support for multilibs.  I think
> that if we do that right, abi support, and thread support would fall
> out pretty much of their own accord.  Unfortunately, none of the libtool
> developers use multilib, and I'm not aware of a libtool using project
> that would need it (at least until I saw Bob's message about gcc multilib
> builds just now).

It seems to me that the need for multilib has little to do with 
project requirements.  It has to do with target environment/install 
requirements.  Some usages never have a need for multilib, while 
others benefit.  It would certainly be helpful to me if my project 
could build both static & shared libraries for both 32 bit and 64 bit 
SPARC from a single build.  Likewise, Opteron users would probably 
want to build 32 bit and 64 bit libraries from a single build.  Even 
if multiple targets are not generated by a single build, a multilib 
install usually uses special library naming or install directories, 
and libtool can support/enforce that.

Multilib does present some issues for projects though.  They need to 
be prepared for it.  If a single set of headers does not work for all 
multilib targets, then special headers may need to be installed for 
each multilib target.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen