Re: What makes a convenience library (use --whole-archive)?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 7 Jun 2011, Michael Poole wrote:

> Some of the files in my convenience libraries have static
> initializers.  By default, the linker discards these symbols because
> they are not referenced.  I am trying to figure out how to keep them
> in an automake-driven build.

Libtool "convenience" libraries are created like an archive library 
(using 'ar') but are not actually used like a library.  Instead, 
whenever they are referenced as a dependency, libtool extracts all of 
the object files from the archive file and links them directly into 
the executable, just like the program's own .o files.  The 
"convenience" library then becomes a convenient way to bundle the 
object files for later use.  Note that this is different than linking 
in the normal way with an archive library because in that case, the 
linker selects only the objects which were actually referenced by the 
program.

I think that this information should help considerably with 
understanding the issue.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/