| GNU Libtool |
| *********** |
| |
| 1. In the near future |
| ===================== |
| |
| 1.1. libtool |
| ------------ |
| |
| * Rather than looking up the linker's hardcode characteristics in a |
| table of shell code, use objdump or equivalent to probe a test program |
| at configure time. |
| |
| * Eliminate the warnings from autoconf -Wobsolete. |
| |
| * Hook the various language dependencies into the autoconf _AC_LANG |
| framework. |
| |
| * Work out what to do when the dynamic linker loads needed dependencies. |
| |
| * We could have an option to hardcode paths into libraries, as well as |
| binaries: `... -Wl,-soname -Wl,/tmp/libtest.so.0 ...'. This is not |
| possible on all platforms, and is in part obviated by the ability of |
| linking libtool libraries specified with -lname, but it might still |
| be desirable. |
| |
| * Lists of exported symbols should be stored in the pseudo library |
| so that the size of lt_preloaded_symbols can be reduced. |
| |
| * Have some option to tell libtool not to include -L flags that point |
| into a certain tree in the dependence list of an installed library. |
| For example: -L-$top_builddir would let one link with libtool |
| libraries in sibling subdirectories within a project, using the -L |
| notation, without getting builddir pathnames ever mentioned in .la |
| files that get installed. |
| |
| * Eric Lemings <elemings@cyberia.lemings.com> writes: |
| Because of a growing number of config scripts for packages in GNOME 1.2 |
| (e.g. glib-config, xml-config, orbit-config. etc), development of GNOME |
| 2.0 spawned a separate tool called pkg-config that allows all packages |
| to use one tool rather than several different scripts to query compile |
| flags, link flags, and other configuration data. |
| |
| The functionality of pkg-config seems to me to have a lot of overlap |
| with the goals of libtool. I was wondering if anyone had considered |
| adding an eighth mode to libtool that just queries the installed |
| library for the same information that pkg-config provides. Since |
| most packages that use pkg-config also use libtool, I think this |
| would be a good way to reduce maintainer and developer dependencies. |
| |
| * Have libtoolize install `install-sh' if a newer version is available, |
| and/or Automake is not used. |
| |
| * Allow to specify linking some dependent libraries statically and some |
| dynamically, where possible. |
| |
| * Improve support for C++ with templates. |
| |
| * Audit file listing in libtool.m4. |
| |
| * Fix deplibs_check_method=pass_all (which is wrong!) on linux. |
| |
| * Fix -dlopen "self" on AIX. Reported by Gary Kumfert <kumfert@llnl.gov>. |
| |
| * Fix denial of service if using installed `libtool' on a different mount point |
| together with a compiler which does not understand `-c -o'. |
| Reported by Marcin Siennicki. |
| |
| * Look at better -no-undefined support, maybe along the idea of |
| [support #103719] for CC. |
| |
| |
| 1.2. libltdl |
| ------------ |
| |
| * Change libltdl interface: add separate functions for function |
| pointers. This will allow porting to systems where function pointers |
| are incompatible with data pointer C-wise. |
| |
| * Fix the following bugs in libltdl: |
| - error reporting of tryall_dlopen(): |
| if the file actually doesn't exist (stat() fails or it wasn't dlpreopened) |
| -> report `file not found' |
| if it cannot be loaded (e.g. due to missing dependencies) |
| -> report dlerror |
| open question: which error should be reported if all dlloaders fail |
| or if a specific module type can only be loaded by one of them, how report its dlerror? |
| Also report dlerror() for dlclose and dlsym if available |
| - Make sure that the dependency_libs of a dlpreopened module won't be loaded. |
| |
| - Fix mdemo failures on mingw. |
| |
| - Fix the last memleak. Reported by Jeff Squyres <jsquyres@lam-mpi.org>. |
| |
| - Fix LTDL_CONVENIENCE. Reported by Bob Friesenhahn |
| and Patrick Welche <prlw1@newn.cam.ac.uk>. |
| |
| |
| 1.3. libtoolize |
| --------------- |
| |
| * Rewrite the func_copy_* functions so that instead of forking 2 tar |
| processes per copied file, a list of files to copy is built and all |
| files copied with a single pair of tar processes. |
| |
| * Write test case that adds libtool macros to aclocal.m4. |
| |
| |
| 2. In the future |
| ================ |
| |
| 2.1. Documentation |
| ------------------ |
| |
| * Need to finalize the documentation, and give a specification of |
| `.la' files so that people can depend on their format. This would be |
| a good thing to put before the maintainance notes. |
| |
| * Document the installed `libtool' and its limitations clearly (maybe implement |
| --disable-script-install as well). Or, even better, remove its limitations. |
| |
| * Platform notes redo. |
| |
| 2.2. test suite |
| --------------- |
| |
| * Rewrite the whole thing in Autotest. This will enable us to remove |
| all the tests/*demo noise, and duplication; and thus speed up bootstrap |
| and make writing new tests a whole lot more pleasant. |
| |
| * We should include tests with reloadable objects in the testsuite. |
| |
| * Write a test case for linkage with gnu ld scripts (per 2004-08-25 patch |
| from Paolo Bonzini). |
| |
| * Test everything: |
| - cross compile |
| - dirs with ~ |
| - multiple input files |
| |
| 2.3. libtool |
| ------------ |
| |
| * Fix cross-compiling. |
| |
| * Fix threads. |
| |
| * Support multilibbing. |
| |
| * If not cross-compiling, have the static flag test run the resulting |
| binary to make sure everything works. |
| |
| * Another form of convenience library is to have undocumented utility |
| libraries, where only the shared version is installed. |
| |
| * We could use libtool object convenience libraries that resolve |
| symbols to be included in a libtool archive. This would require some |
| sort of -whole-archive option, as well. |
| |
| * Currently, convenience libraries (.al) are built from .lo objects, |
| except when --disable-shared. When we can build both shared and |
| static libraries, we should probably create a .al out of .lo objects |
| and also a .a out of .o objects. The .al would only be used to create |
| shared libraries, whereas the .a would be used for creating static |
| libraries and programs. We could also explicitly support `empty' |
| convenience libraries, that behave as macros that expand to a set of |
| -Rs, -Ls and -ls switches. |
| |
| * Audit use of object names so we can allow `$' not only within |
| source file names. Necessary especially for java. |
| |
| * We could introduce a mechanism to allow for soname rewriting, to |
| ease multi-libc support. Installers could specify a prefix, suffix or |
| sed command to modify the soname, and libtool would create the |
| corresponding link. This would allow for rebuilding a library with |
| the same version number, but depending on different versions of libc, |
| for example. In the future, we might even have an option to encode |
| the sonames of all dependencies of a library into its soname. |
| |
| * Look again at a binary C libtool, or byte-compiled libtool to improve |
| speed. |
| |
| * Generate some "platform specific" shell functions with config.status, |
| for example, there is no need to have the C source code for the |
| wrapper script on non-windows platforms, this will make the generated |
| libtool script smaller and easier to follow, maybe a little faster |
| too? |
| |
| * Audit the GCJ tag section in libtool.m4. |
| |
| * Add caching mechanism. Look at `libtool-cache' from Robert Ă–gren. |
| |
| |
| 2.4. libtool autoconf macros |
| ---------------------------- |
| |
| * Sort out the macro mess in libtool.m4. We've started this already |
| by refactoring chunks into separate files, but I never did completely |
| untangle the mess of macros imported from ltconfig. |
| |
| * The definitions for LT_SYS_MODULE_EXT, LT_SYS_MODULE_PATH and |
| LT_SYS_DLSEARCH_PATH should not rely on the _LT_SYS_DYNAMIC_LINKER |
| macro. This involves moving the code which sets the variables |
| library_names_spec, shlibpath_var and sys_lib_dlsearch_path_spec from |
| into a separate macro, and AC_REQUIRING the newly extracted macro in the |
| respective ltdl.m4 macros. |
| |
| 2.5. libtool automake integration |
| --------------------------------- |
| |
| * Unify locks between libtool and compile. |
| |
| * Fix relinking. |
| |
| 2.6. libltdl |
| ------------ |
| |
| * Finish the rewrite of the core libltdl. The loaders are fine, and |
| the outlying code is now good. Ralf is starting to pick away at a lot |
| of the remaining nasties already, but the code for finding .la/.so files |
| and reading/loading them could use a lot more improvement. |
| |
| * I think we could factor out a little path management support module |
| from existing libltdl. This would be useful for M4 at least -- keeping |
| track of FOO_PATH environment contents, searching for files in paths |
| etc. |
| |
| * Try to find a work-around for -[all-]static and libltdl on platforms |
| that will fail to find dlopening functions in this case. Maybe |
| creating an alternate libltdl that provides only for dlpreopening, or |
| creating an additional static library to provide dummy implementations |
| of the functions that can't be linked statically. This could hardly |
| be made completely transparent, though. |
| |
| * In conjunction with above, fix the failures on *BSD when linked to |
| static libc. Reported by Guilhem Lavaux <guilhem@kaffe.org>. |
| |
| * Add i18n strings to libltdl, ensuring that package developers can |
| ignore any i18n when they libtoolize. |
| |
| 2.7. win32 support |
| ------------------ |
| |
| * Arrange that EXEEXT suffixes are stripped from wrapper script names |
| only when needed, and that a timestamp file or a wrapper program is |
| created with the EXEEXT suffix, so that `make' doesn't build it every |
| time. |
| |
| * Figure out how to use data items in dlls with win32. |
| The difficult part is compiling each object which will be linked with an |
| import lib differently than if it will be linked with a static lib. This |
| will almost definitely require that automake pass some hints about linkage |
| in to each object compilation line. |
| |
| * jeffdb@goodnet.com writes: |
| all you need to do for mutually dependent .dll's is to create an implib from |
| a .def file so it appears that we might need to detect and handle mutual |
| dependencies specially on win32 =(O| |
| |
| |
| 3. Wish List |
| ============ |
| |
| * Maybe implement full support for other orthogonal library types |
| (libhello_g, libhello_p, 64 vs 32-bit ABI's, etc). Make these types |
| configurable. |
| |
| * Perhaps the use of libltdl could be made cleaner by allowing |
| registration of hook functions to call at various points. This would |
| hopefully free the user from having to maintain a parallel module |
| list with user data. This would likely involve being able to carry |
| additional per user module data in the lt_dlmodule structure -- perhaps |
| in the form of an associative array keyed by user name? |
| |
| * Figure out how to make pkg-config aware of the information libtool |
| knows about libraries and their dependencies, and send a patch. |
| |
| * Generate a libtool.m4 from a bunch of individual files, one per |
| platform, to make the job of a "platform maintainer" easier and make |
| it easier to add new platforms. |
| |
| -- |
| Copyright (C) 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc. |
| Written by Gary V. Vaughan, 2004 |
| |
| This file is part of GNU Libtool. |
| |
| GNU Libtool is free software; you can redistribute it and/or |
| modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as |
| published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of |
| the License, or (at your option) any later version. |
| |
| GNU Libtool is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, |
| but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of |
| MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the |
| GNU General Public License for more details. |
| |
| You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License |
| along with GNU Libtool; see the file COPYING. If not, a copy |
| can be downloaded from http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html, |
| or obtained by writing to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., |
| 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA. |
| |
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