Re: [bug-gawk] [PATCH 2/2] Fix plugin load failure on OS/2

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 20:49:27 +0900
> From: KO Myung-Hun <address@hidden>
> CC: address@hidden
> 
> >> OS/2 cannot load DLLs whose base name is longer than 8 characters.
> >> Because of this, libtool limits length of DLL base name up to 8
> >> characters. In Gawk, limits likewise.
> > 
> > Isn't it better/cleaner to have an OS/2 wrapper for dlopen, and
> > truncate the name there?  (And why doesn't dlopen itself do that, if
> > this is an OS/2 limitation?)
> > 
> 
> Unfortunately, wrapping dlopen() is not enough. Because gawk checks the
> existence of extensions with find_source(). This patch is for it.

Maybe I didn't understand the issue well enough.  Could you please
elaborate on it?  What exactly is the limitation, which C library
functions enforce it, and how is libtool related to this?

And what happens if I compile an extension into a DLL whose file name
has more than 8 characters in its base-name?  Will such a DLL be
completely unusable on OS/2?

> I have a question. there are any cases calling load_ext() without
> find_source() ?

Doesn't look that way, but it's hard to tell.