Feature request: Globalize symbol

[Hans-Peter Nilsson]

> Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 14:41:23 -0800
> From: James E Wilson <wilson@specifixinc.com>

> Fredrik Hugosson wrote:
> > My proposal is the following new options:
> > -fglobalize-symbol=SYMBOLNAME
> > -fglobalize-symbols=FILENAME
> > -fglobalize-all-symbols
> 
> It is unlikely someone will volunteer to implement a feature that only 
> you need.

On the other hand, this is a future that seems likely to be of
use to others, and it's likely that I'll help implement it, if
the usability and other details are agreed upon.

> Globalizing a symbol in a shared library is potentially unsafe, and that 
> may resulting in linker conflicts, or it may result in a shared library 
> variable being overriden by a variable in another module causing silent 
> changes in behaviour.

I think you misunderstood.  The suggested feature is for
*non-source-intrusive instrumentation* only.  The goal is to
make static-declared functions and variables in file scope to be
global, not static, so they *can* be overridden elsewhere and/or
renamed through the GNU linker "--wrap" feature.

Perhaps it is better described that -fglobalize-all-symbols
would be equivalent to "#define static" when there are no
function-scope statics.  I'm told there are no known way to
accomplish this by other means.  Of course the user of that
option must know that no (unintended) symbol conflicts occur.

> Another way to attack this problem would be to add accessor functions to 
> the shared libraries.

But that requires source-level instrumentation.

brgds, H-P