Re: an installation bug in either gcc, gld, or readline -- I don't know which

[Phil Edwards <pedwards at disaster dot jaj dot com>]

On Tue, Dec 25, 2001 at 09:50:38AM -0500, Andrew Koenig wrote:
> Installation of readline 4.2a (the latest version, as far as I know)
> fails with the message
> 
>       /usr/gnu/bin/ld: -r and -shared may not be used together
> 
> The command that fails is
> 
>       gcc -shared -Wl,-i -Wl,-h,libreadline.so.4  -o libreadline.so.4

This might be readline assuming that, because you're on a Solaris system,
that Solaris' ld is being used.  Clearly you're using GNU's ld.  (Which is
usually a smart thing to do on Solaris.)  The compiler knows this, but
the readline makefile wouldn't.

I'm guessing this because Sun's ld's -i means to ignore LD_LIBRARY_PATH
when linking.  GNU ld's -i is the same as -r, which means to perform an
incremental link and emit a file which can be used as input on a subsequent
link call; this can't be done when creating a shared library, but -r is
used in the error message instead of -i, since -r is the primary option
and -i is just a synonym.


I don't have GNU readline installed, so I can't verify this.  I do see
that there is a 4.2a released.  I will grab a copy and take a look.


> I am reporting this problem to gcc-bugs because the cause appears to be
> that gcc is passing options to the Gnu loader that the loader will not
> accept.  I would think that that should not happen even if inappropriate
> options are given to the gcc command.

In this case, it wouldn't help anyway:  the -Wl switch is a hook, which
passes its argument(s) to the linker directly.  The linker sees the -i
without any rewriting.  For one linker it would be okay, for another linker
it isn't; so I suspect readline's configuration is understandably assuming
Sun's linker is present.


Phil
P.S.- As an aside, I see that you yourself took the cover photo for
Accelerated C++.  Might I ask where that photo was taken?

-- 
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