Re: Minimal GCC/Linux shared lib + EH bug example

[Matthew Austern <austern at apple dot com>]

On Wednesday, May 15, 2002, at 11:32 AM, Sean Parent wrote:

>> I guess I just disagree with you there. I don't think the problem on 
>> Linux
>> is really in the compilers. We can make the compiler do something which
>> works around a few of the problems (i.e. by comparing typeinfo::name() 
>> for
>> EH) but we can't really solve the problems in any meaningful way 
>> without
>> changing the loader.
>
> I can see that - it sounds like with Linux a lot already just works - 
> great.
> But what does work isn't defined to work in the standard, and I'm not 
> sure
> it's a reasonable extension to say "because it works on Linux it could 
> be
> made to work anywhere." I'm also still not convinced that the Linux
> direction is the direction the standard should be going in.
>
>> Okay, now we're in Windows land. That's a completely different domain 
>> and
>> may require different solutions... but I'm out of time for tonight.
>
> Windows and Mac land - and most of what you are taking for granted just
> doesn't work that way on these platforms. Before we jump in to solve the
> last bits for Linux I think we need to step back and define what the 
> first
> bits are for the standard.

I agree.

I think it's a bit unfortunate that this discussion got crossposted
between the gcc development list and that C++ standardization
reflector; I think we might be having a discussion that's not very
useful to either group.

There are at least two interesting questions we might ask:
  (1) what should a future version of the C++ standard say
      about dynamic libraries?
  (2) considering what the standard says right now, and
      recognizing that we're talking about behavior outside
      the scope of the standard, what behavior for gcc would
      best serve users on a linux/ELF platform?

I think we should disentangle those two questions, and
probably hold them in different places.

(I'm actually concerned about a third question: what should
gcc do on a system that uses MACH-O instead of ELF.)

			--Matt