From: Hal Black <black@ieee.org>
To: binutils <binutils@sources.redhat.com>
Subject: Re: [BUG] ld behavior varies for C++ static initializer depending on .a or .o input
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 05:14:00 -0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <3E9A4397.5010309@ieee.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <m3r886f1no.fsf@gossamer.airs.com>
Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> Hal Black <black@ieee.org> writes:
>
>
>>>It means that including any class with a static initializer in a .a
>>>file would mean that that class would be included in all programs
>>>linked with that .a file.
>>
>>Yes. That's the desired behavior. If a developer were to develop a
>>library with a static initializer with side-effects, it would be
>>something that should be called whenever that library was used.
>
>
> No Unix linker has ever worked that way.
Well, for most of the lifetime of Unix, there were no static
initializers, since there was no C++, so this is not surprising.
> Also, while this is not the reason for not making the change, it turns
> out that it is not an efficient change to make. It would require the
> linker to examine every object in every archive, which obviates the
> entire point of having archives in the first place. Again, this
> inefficiency, while severe, is not the reason for not making the
> change; the reason for not making the change is that ld and ar
> implement behaviour which has not changed for decades, and should not
> be changed now.
For the C code that ld has been linking for decades, I agree with you 100%.
But, C++ has additional requirements. Either the tool needs to change
to meet these requirements, or a different tool needs to be used to meet
them.
If .a is meant only for what it has been used for decades without
changing to accomodate the full C++ specification, you're right, I
misunderstood the usage for it. That is definately not what I want.
Based on the other replies, I guess that .so can be used to acheive the
desired behavior even though it includes too much.
Anyway, thank you for responding and for your time, Ian.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2003-04-14 5:14 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 17+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2003-04-11 3:43 Hal Black
2003-04-11 4:47 ` Alexandre Oliva
2003-04-12 4:01 ` Hal Black
2003-04-12 5:43 ` Alexandre Oliva
2003-04-12 14:24 ` Hal Black
2003-04-12 16:52 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2003-04-12 18:01 ` Hal Black
2003-04-12 20:45 ` Alexandre Oliva
2003-04-13 2:11 ` Hal Black
2003-04-14 18:41 ` Alexandre Oliva
2003-04-13 22:55 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2003-04-13 23:07 ` Zack Weinberg
2003-04-13 23:15 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2003-04-13 23:26 ` Ulrich Drepper
2003-04-14 5:14 ` Hal Black [this message]
2003-04-14 5:30 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2003-04-11 8:16 ` Alan Modra
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