fate of libxml2 in gcc

[Florian Weimer]

* Richard Biener via Gcc:

> I think one important part is to make the use of libxml from libgcobol an
> implementation detail and not part of its ABI which means making sure
> to not export any libxml symbols from libgcobol.

> I wonder if going the libgfortran/libquadmath way would be another possibility
> to avoid having all COBOL programs depend on libxml?  That is, link
> libxml2 to the program (as-needed) and have the frontend generate calls
> into libxml2 rather than dispatching through libgcobol.

Aren't these two goals in conflict?  Why would a program dependency
better than a dependency mediated through libgcobol?

A compromise approach could be a libgcobol and a libgcobol-xml, which
exports a stable API, but in its current implementation depends on
libxml2 (unless it's a stub and its functions always fail).

Thanks,
Florian