Re: libtool 1.4.2 on Darwin

[Benjamin Reed]

On Wed, 2002-10-09 at 19:10, Robert Boehne wrote:
> If we added support for library namespace, all of the
> Darwin developers would start developing software with
> Libtool that used it, and therefore wouldn't link on
> other systems, correct?  I'm not claiming I have ever
> seen a Mac running X+ so you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong.
>   Libtool's philosophy is mostly to provide the common
> subset of linker/loader/compiler features, and to specifically
> NOT support features that aren't available elsewhere.  Now,
> this isn't always the case, but if you wanted to add support
> for library namespaces for other platforms *IN_Libtool*
> then it would be reasonable, but more work.  I doubt that
> is possible anyway.

Right,  that's why there's a problem...  libtool is already making the
decision for developers on Darwin (to a flat namespace), but that's not
always the best course of action; if possible it would be better to link
with a twolevel namespace to not have symbol collisions in the future.

The current behaviour is like libtool forcing -O0 on gcc because it's
less likely to cause compilation errors.  The flat namespace bit was
added to libtool assumedly because early in Darwin's history with
libtool it fixed some packages' building, but it's not necessarily
optimal.

Unfortunately I don't know the full consequences of changing it, which
is why it would be nice to choose on the libtool command-line, and leave
it up to developers.  It could be a no-op on platforms that don't
support multi-level namespaces (ie, every platform but Darwin), but let
the developer choose if he is of a mind to.

I don't have a problem with trying to hack this in, I expect it's not
terribly difficult, but I don't think I could get a patch for you before
any kind of release freeze, and I don't know in what manner (or if) it
would play well with the way libtool implements these things.  =)