Re: flat namespaces redux

[Robert Boehne]

Albert,

Ok, I'd agree with that mostly, but in the case of AIX, Libtool
doesn't build a single archive with both shared and static, it
does the same thing it does on other platforms.  In the same
way it wouldn't be of much use if Libtool did do this, but perhaps
some AIX diehards would like it.
If there was a patch posted that worked similar to the AIX -brtl trigger
to allow for twolevel namespaces, and it didn't change default
behavior, I would consider it.  Still, regardless of how it is done,
all that twolevel namespace support will do is allow severely
broken libraries to build on a single platform.  Rather than fix
them to work with a flat namespace, like every other platform.
I liken this to encouraging bad behavior, but if someone cares
to make and test a patch that checked for LDFLAGS containing
-twolevl (or whatever the link flag is) I'd be willing to approve
it if done properly.  Even so, isn't it nearly pointless?
For this feature to really be useful a library would have to be
  a) Initially developed on OS/X
  b) dependent on two level namespace
  c) not really useful on any other plaform (no reason to
     fix for a flat namespace)
I don't think there are too many libraries that would fit this
criteria, but please, correct me if I'm wrong.

In short, I'm not dead set against the idea, I just don't see the point.

Robert


Albert Chin wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 11:59:03PM -0600, Robert Boehne wrote:
> > Maybe I don't understand OS X, but as I see it, any library
> > that needs a two level namespace would not build on any other OS
> > because OS X is the only OS that supports this feature.
> > Now, if that is the case, it doesn't make any sense for Libtool
> > (a tool for portable library creation & use) to support a feature
> > that is only present on a single platform.  Does that make sense?
> 
> I think we should support the two-level namespace, even if it is
> OSX-specific. I look at libtool more as a way to easily build shared
> libraries across multiple platforms.
> 
> Think about AIX. An AIX shared library (non-brtl) can contain *both* a
> static and shared member. We don't emulate this across all platforms.
> 
> And, how about this warning in ltmain.in (a non-portable feature):
>   echo "*** Warning: Linking the shared library $output against the"
>   echo "*** static library $deplib is not portable!"
>   deplibs="$deplib $deplibs"
> 
> --
> albert chin (address@hidden)
> 
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