Re: Convenience libraries and applications.

[Carlo Wood]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2004 at 12:09:10PM +0900, Peter O'Gorman wrote:
> -export-dynamic is to export symbols from an application so that they are 
> available to runtime loaded code.
> 
> GNU libtool convenience libraries are, as far as I know, only designed to 
> use the whole archive when they are used in creating shared libraries. They 
> are built using position independent code for that purpose. While you can 
> use them when building applications, that is not their purpose.

Then how should one build an executable that exists of source files
spread over multiple directories?  I thought I even saw examples that
use convenience libs for that casse, though I could be wrong.
Did I miss something in the documentation of libtool?

> There is no way to do what you want, at the moment, using libtool (to my 
> knowledge). "convenience" libraries are just treated as ordinary libraries 
> when creating an executable. I suggest that you reference the symbols in 
> the executable so that your linker will keep them around. If you want to 
> add this feature to libtool (it sounds like it may be useful)... send 
> patches.

I think it is clear by now (from this thread) that this is actually a
needed but missing feature in libtool, so it should be added.  However,
I am a C++ coder - not a shell script coder; someone else with knowledge
of the internals of libtool can do this job a lot more efficiently.  Also
take into account that that doesn't mean that I am sitting on the beach
while that other person is fixing this; I work my ass off around the clock
on Open Source, just different packages.

Thanks,

-- 
Carlo Wood <address@hidden>