Re: Including static libraries in shared libraries with libtool.

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Sun, 26 Sep 2004, Howard Chu wrote:

> > > One more time, shouting into the senseless void...
> > >
> > > If these so-called "convenience" libraries are meant to be linked in 
> > > whole, they should not be ar archives at all. You should just link them 
> > > directly into a relocatable object file:
> > >     ld -r -o <convenience.obj> *.o
>
> > And do we know that all platforms have a program called "ld", then 
> > implements the "-r" option with the given semantics?
>
> Do we know that all platforms have a "compiler" that takes "source files" as 
> input and produces "object files" as output? Do we know that all platforms 
> treat these "object files" as intermediate files that then must be magically 
> combined into a usable "executable" (or "shared library") file?

We are at least assured (by the C standard) that there are 
"translation" units which may include other files.  We know how code 
in these translation units is initialized at run-time.  Everything 
else is left open to imagination.  Luckily, little in the computing 
world happens by chance and the tendency is toward order rather than 
chaos.

> On any platform where these conditions are false, libtool has no function 
> anyway. Foregoing this approach due to supposed portability concerns is 
> totally baseless.

You are taking things to an extreme.  Your proposed simple command 
will surely fail if the system has an arbitrary maximum command line 
length (most do) and will fail if the objects use some other extension 
than ".o".  Many assumptions are made which may not exist in practice.

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