Re: Building a shared libgcc

[Alexandre Oliva <oliva at dcc dot unicamp dot br>]

On Aug  3, 1999, Jeffrey A Law <law@cygnus.com> wrote:

>> One idea is to build libgcc (and the other run-time libs) with
>> libtool, and arrange that (some subset or equivalent of) libtool is
>> used to link with it.

> I'd prefer not to have to fart around with libtool if we can help
> it; but ultimately we might have to.

Ouch!, that hurts! :-)


I thought it would be ok to use libtool at least for the build, since
libgcj does it already.  Of course, gcc could get around libtool at
run-time, by duplicating the hard-coding efforts, but just mopping
under the carpet the problem of finding shared libraries at run-time,
as we've been doing for libstdc++ for years, is not something we
should do, IMHO, should we decide to build a shared libgcc.

But maybe I'm just overestimating the number of people that enable
shared libraries when building GCC *and* install it in non-standard
locations.  The fact that we don't get too many reports about this
probably indicates that either people read the FAQ or that I'm
overestimating it, but the fact that we *do* get some such reports
indicates I'm not alone :-)


WRT using libtool at run-time, for linking, it isn't currently
feasible anyway; it will require some work on libtool to arrange that
it can be used by gcc for linking, but I think it is a nice project,
that is worth pursuing, at least for hacking value :-)

Incidentally, it would be of much help for libtool to support multiple
languages, because, instead of having to figure out by itself the
command line options and libraries gcc passes to a linker, it would be
able to get them straight from gcc.

What do other libtool developers and users think?  Should we
reconsider implementing the C-compiled version of libtool?  Would it
be good for gcc to use it for linking?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva IC-Unicamp, Bra[sz]il
oliva@{dcc.unicamp.br,guarana.{org,com}} aoliva@{acm.org,computer.org}
oliva@{gnu.org,kaffe.org,{egcs,sourceware}.cygnus.com,samba.org}
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