[devel] lj_udrepper --as-needed libtool moronic idiots

[Alexey Tourbin <at@altlinux.ru>]

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DSO memory waste II at 15-06-2006 08:12:37
http://udrepper.livejournal.com/11056.html

[...]

   The third question/comment was why --as-needed isn't just always used.
   This is just as stupid as always use hidden symbols visibility via the
   new gcc options like certain distributions do it now for KDE. Both
   these methods change the ABI of a program sooner or later. Obviously,
   default hidden visibility prevents symbols from being exported unless
   specified otherwise. This means it'll break some code and the
   appropriate visibility attributes have to be added and then new
   binaries have to be provided. That's nothing a sane person should do.
   Similarly for --as-needed. The linked-in DSO form a predictable search
   scope for symbol lookups. Removing a DSO will change the search scope
   and some lookups will suddenly find a different definition or will
   fail. This will only affect symbol lookups performed dynamically via
   dlsym() but it has happened.

   Fortunately this is a rare occurrence but nevertheless reason enough
   to not use --as-needed explicitly. Add the option to the Makefiles in
   the the right places, it's not hard. I seem to remember that somebody
   said this would create problems with libtool. Well, too bad. I've said
   all along the libtool of today is one of the biggest hindrances of
   development and deployment and shouldn't be used. When we wrote the
   first libtool version it was only meant to iron over the minor
   differences between various ELF tools. Since then it has been hijacked
   by those idiots who wanted to support the moronic dynamic linking
   methods used on winblowz and hpsux. Ever since that happened libtool
   is nothing but a problem for sane ELF platforms and should be avoided
   [1]. So, just avoid using libtool and link normally with the gcc
   driver. Then using --as-needed is no problem at all.


   [1] Including the wrappers around dlopen() and dlsym() which are
   completely unnecessary on Linux and just make programs slow and
   bloated.


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