Re: fixes to mdemo2 - appropriate?

[Greg Eisenhauer]

Bob Friesenhahn writes:
 > On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, Greg Eisenhauer wrote:
 > >    Basically the situation is this.  mdemo2 is a simple executable that
 > > links in an outside libtool library.  The complication is that that
 > > outside library (../mdemo/libmlib.la) uses libltdl to dlopen other
 > > libraries.  Because of this, mdemo2, which doesn't directly use
 > > libltdl, must call LTDL_SET_PRELOADED_SYMBOLS() in main(), which means
 > > it must find an appropriate ltdl.h to include, and it must also call
 > > AC_LIBTOOL_DLOPEN in its configure.ac.
 > >    I understand why this is necessary given the current implementation
 > > of libtool, but I don't think it represents a good situation.
 > > Essentially libtool is requiring the builders of an executable to know
 > > whether or not any of the libraries they include might use libltdl.
 > > libtool should be hiding those details.
 > 
 > I don't believe that libtool should be hiding this particular detail.
 > If a library uses libltdl then it must provide a means to initialize
 > it.  Typically this could be done by requiring that a library
 > initialization function be executed before any other library function
 > is invoked.  This library initialization function can invoke
 > LTDL_SET_PRELOADED_SYMBOLS() if necessary.  There is no need for the
 > dependent application to include ltdl.h or (knowingly) invoke
 > LTDL_SET_PRELOADED_SYMBOLS().

That would be good.  But for this to be possible, don't we have to generate
the symbol list into the static library so that the symbol is availble when
the library is created?  I.E. it wouldn't work now on many platforms, would
it?