Should libtool link in libgcc when building a shared library?

[Steve Ellcey]

I would just like to verify that the intended behaviour of libtool, when
using GCC to build a shared library, is to *not* automatically include
'-lgcc' on the link line used to build the shared library.

Is that the correct, intended behaviour?

The reason I ask is I am trying to port libffi (part of GCC) to IA64
HP-UX and am using the HP-UX linker.  libffi has a dependency on libgcc,
but is currently not including '-lgcc' on the link line that builds
libffi.  This causes the HP linker to issue a warning when I link a
program against libffi.

In the 1.4 (?)  based libtool that is in the GCC sources, some platforms
use GCC to link and when they do that they get -lgcc automatically.  I
made this change (locally) and it fixed my problem, but when I look at
the latest libtool sources I see that platforms that use GCC to link now
also use '-nostdlib' and thus would not get the '-lgcc' automatically.

So it seems like the change I made is not the correct change (since it
would get undone if and when GCC updated to libtool 1.5.*.  Rather I
need to add an explicit '-lgcc' to the libtool command line that creates
libffi instead.  Does that sound right?

Steve Ellcey
address@hidden