Re: building shared libraries on a.out variants of NetBSD

[Todd Vierling <tv at pobox dot com>]

On 23 Dec 2000, Alexandre Oliva wrote:

: I'm not aware of the existing problems in NetBSD, though.  Maybe
: there's just no way of creating C++ shared libraries with GCC on older
: versions, in which case we'd disable shared libraries on those
: platforms, not silently break them.

Here's the rundown:

NetBSD a.out prior to NetBSD 1.4:
  Must use "ld -Bshareable" and explicitly add /usr/lib/c++rt0.o as the
  first objectfile in the list (which won't hurt C libraries, but is only
  compiled one of -fpic and -fPIC, which is a PITA for things like sparc)

NetBSD a.out in and after NetBSD 1.4:
  Can now use "[g]cc -shared", but c++rt0.o is still not automatically
  included; "ld -Bshareable" method still works

  (could probably be detected from inspection of a -dumpspecs output,
  rather than a NetBSD [kernel] version number; not currently detected in
  libtool)

NetBSD a.out, post-gcc-current (Richard's patches):
  Can now use "[g]cc -shared" with automatic inclusion of C++ machinery

  (could probably be detected from inspection of a -dumpspecs output,
  rather than a NetBSD [kernel] version number; not currently detected in
  libtool)

NetBSD ELF, all versions:
  Should use "[g]cc -shared" ("ld -Bshareable" can work, but you need
  crtbeginS/crtendS and friends, and gcc is already smart enough on these
  platforms to do that much for you)

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (tv@pobox.com)