Creating dynamic libraries

[Matthew Laird]

Hello,

I've been trolling around google and the mailing list archives and can't 
find the answers I'm looking for, so hopefully this is the right place to 
turn...

I'm trying to extend a package by allowing it to crease shared dynamic
libraries which I plan to link against in a perl package.  I've found a
way to create what I want, but upon reading a bit I've found it's probably
not portable beyond linux, so I'm trying to determine the "right way" to
do it.  Everything I've read indicates I should use libtool, but I'm
having trouble determining exactly how to get libtool to make shared
dynamic libraries.

I've currently modified this package's existing Makefile.in to have the 
following line:
libhmmer.so: $(OBJS)
        $(CC) -shared -Wl,-soname,libhmmer.so -o libhmmer.so $(OBJS)

>From what I understand .so is very linux-centric.  How would I create 
something more portable?  Or even configure things so a dynamic library is 
only created when supported by the OS?

This package already has the following section:
libhmmer.a: $(OBJS)
        $(AR) libhmmer.a $(OBJS)
        $(RANLIB) libhmmer.a
        chmod 644 libhmmer.a

Which again, I'm unsure of the portability of this.

Any advice would be welcome.  Thanks.

-- 
Matthew Laird
SysAdmin/Web Developer, Brinkman Laboratory, MBB Dept.
Simon Fraser University