How the "library naming scheme" works loading dynamical libraries?

[Martin Egholm Nielsen]

Tom Tromey wrote:
>>>>>>"Martin" == Martin Egholm Nielsen <martin@egholm-nielsen.dk> writes:
(Evaluates to: true. Shouldn't it be ":=" or "="?)

> Martin> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/java/2002-11/msg00394.html
> There are some docs here:
> http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.0.2/gcj/Extensions.html#Extensions
Super!! Thanks Tom!

I don't know why I'm so poor at finding such things...

> Martin> Fine! However, I'm not quite familiar with the mechanism that tracks
> Martin> down the implementation, "bte", located in the library "lib-bte.so".
> 
> Martin> Does the class loader search each and every library in LD_LIBRARY_PATH
> Martin> for this implementation? In it does, when does it do - at gcj
> Martin> init-time or at Class.forName() invocation-time?
> 
> Whenever we search for a class we will look for a shared library
> whose name is derived from the class.  Actually we search for a
> series of libraries, stripping off components from the end.  So for
> 'base.pkg.Class' we will look for 'lib-base-pkg-Class',
> 'lib-base-pkg', and 'lib-base'.
There's the answer I was searching _and_ hoping for! Thx!

> There is a system property to set to change this behavior a little.
> In particular you can turn it off or you can have it cache negative
> results.  FWIW I think we'd like to switch the default to off as this
> feature doesn't play too well with typical java applications.
> (There's a PR for this.)
Now, can you elaborate on "doesn't play too well with typical java 
applications"?
Perhaps you just mean "doesn't fit in (designwise)"?

> We do the search whenever a class is looked for, eg Class.forName(),
> but also when linking a BC or interpreted class.
Perfect!

> This is one of the drawbacks of this approach.  In situations like
> this, when you want to load classes with the same name into different
> class loaders, you will most likely want to go with the BC ABI and the
> class database instead.  See:
> http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/How%20to%20BC%20compile%20with%20GCJ
Not with my 3.4.3 I wont (-:

// Martin