From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Ian Lance Taylor <ian@cygnus.com>
To: shebs@cygnus.com
Cc: ro@TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE, gdb-patches@cygnus.com, gdb@cygnus.com, bfd@cygnus.com
Subject: Re: [gdb 19981224] Enable linking gdb against shared libbfd
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 1999 11:58:00 -0000
Message-id: <199901031957.OAA20819@subrogation.cygnus.com>
References: <199812302155.NAA19227@andros.cygnus.com>
X-SW-Source: 1999/msg00000.html

   Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 13:55:13 -0800
   From: Stan Shebs <shebs@cygnus.com>

      * Using a shared libbfd isn't currently very useful since it doesn't
	support proper (in the libtool sense) interface versioning, without
	-release $(VERSION).  Since any release of binutils and gdb comes with
	it's own version of libbfd, there cannot happen any sharing, at least not
	between binutils and gdb.  Are there any plans to convert libbfd to
	proper versioning?  I doubt it is easy, if at all possible, given it's
	constant state of flux.

   Exactly, which is why there hasn't been much incentive to try to make the
   library shared.  In theory, BFD would only need an internal change from
   to time, and would vary little if at all in its interfaces, but in
   practice, BFD has to know a number of details about minor OS revisions
   and semi-private file formats, so it's proven harder to stabilize than
   originally envisioned.

   To answer the specific question, I don't know of any plans to do
   interface versioning for BFD.  I've cc'ed the bfd list to see if
   anyone has more to say.

Correct: there are no current plans to use -release when building a
BFD shared library.

I believe the correct solution for BFD is to rename the shared library
based on the BFD version number.  However, this is not currently
implemented.

Ian