Re: libltdl is inefficient and a security hazard

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Sun, 25 Oct 2009, Howard Chu wrote:
> Yeah, I recall noticing all this in the past. That's why I usually 
> delete .la files after build time and make sure they never get 
> installed. On platforms where the dependent shared libraries are 
> already listed inside a shared library's dynamic loader section, all 
> of this .la stuff is just wasted effort (and time). So far I only 
> see .la files being useful when statically linking, since the .a 
> archives don't include their dependency info. It would have been 
> smarter for libtool to just store whatever it wanted to record as a 
> stub file inside the .a, IMO.

I suspect that the strange search for a ".a" file is occuring due to 
libltdl's "preopen" loader, which likely gets executed first. 
However, it could be something else since I understand that AIX can 
open shared .a files.  I agree that explicit loading of these many 
dependency libraries is often not necessary.  The modules for my 
package are ready to go as installed (fully linked) and a dlopen() is 
all that is needed.

I'll keep fiddling away until I find the cause ...

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