Re: several AIX questions

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Albert, Dan,

* Albert Chin wrote on Tue, Nov 22, 2005 at 07:59:31PM CET:
> On Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 08:08:50PM +0100, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > 1) This patch from HEAD:
> > 
> > has been applied to the C case only (and not backported to branch-1-5).
> > Should it not be for C++ as well?  What's the reason for it anyway?
> 
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libtool-patches/2004-04/msg00085.html
> 
> Yes, it should be applied to C++ as well.

Thanks.  Will do.

> > Also, should it not also be applied to the ia64 case?
> 
> Dunno. Don't have access to AIX/IA.

Well, given Dan's reply (thanks btw!) that should not be much of an
issue.

> > 3) This thing has me stunned (non-rtl case): mdemo-exec on *uninstalled*
> > modules works, whereas on *installed* ones it fails; reason: we don't
> > install the .so files.  We
> >   ar cru libfoo.a libfoo.so.0
> > and then install libfoo.a only.  What's the right way to fix this?
> > Install libfoo.so.0 as well?  Is there maybe some root-only trickery
> > necessary so that the installed .so file isn't necessary (I think not)?
> 
> Won't the above insert a copy of libfoo.so.0 into libfoo.a?

Yes, it will.

> If mdemo-exec isn't linked with -brtl, why wouldn't it find libfoo.a?

Dan Stromberg has a nice list of AIX info[1].

It actually works to
  dlopen(".libs/libfoo2.a(libfoo2.so.0)", LT_LAZY_OR_NOW | RTLD_MEMBER);

(in mdemo/).  Weird.  It also works to load "libfoo2.so.0", if *that*
file exists (that's why it works in the uninstalled case I think), but
one may not give RTDL_MEMBER.

Please take each of these statements with a grain of salt, I still
haven't understood the shared library unloading issue, and might have
fallen into one of its traps.  Yes, we definitely need good tests here!

Cheers,
Ralf

[1] http://dcs.nac.uci.edu/~strombrg/AIX-shared-libs.html