Re: difference between default behaviour of GNU nm and AIX nm (symbol demangling)

[David Lee]

On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, Laurent Vivier wrote:

> I think GNU nm has the same behaviour on every platform (linux, solaris,
> hp, and so on).
> I want to use libtool on AIX with native AIX nm that hasn't the same
> behaviour.
> Libtool has been developed for GNU nm, so if I want to use AIX nm, I
> need to pass good arguments to have same behaviour as GNU nm.
> I can't test only GNU nm or not because I don't know how acts nm on
> solaris, hp or other.
> So I test "AIX", if AIX I know "special case !", and to be sure I test
> it's not GNU nm (because it can be installed instead of native AIX nm)

As I understand the recommendations, the test you write would ideally be
for the behaviour of "nm" and/or of its arguments on that system.  In your
case, your test would:
 1. invoke "nm ... -C ...", not worrying about whose "nm" it is;
 2. determine which way it behaved;
 3. set something according to that behaviour.

That description makes no mention of any particular OS; we should try to
avoid mention of OS-specific things.  Nor does it mention gnu/not-GNU. 
You can imagine the (non-)availability of GNU "nm" as being an OS-like
variant, and therefore, if reasonably possible, should avoid explicit
mention of it. 

(Note to experts: I think I got that about right, didn't I?  Feel free to
correct!)

Hope that helps.

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