Nick Clifton wrote:
> Hi Howard,
> 
>>>   * It is not clear to me why you create a binary bfd for Libdeps_bfd but
>>>     then convert it to a plugin type bfd.  Can you explain what you are
>>>     doing here ?
>>
>> This was a major hassle, I should have commented it. The bfd gets created
>> with type "plugin", and that refuses the bfd_bwrite() call. (Just fails.)
>> The write only succeeded if I set it to "binary" type first. But then, trying
>> to add this bfd to the archive failed unless I changed the type back to "plugin."
> 
> OK - please could you add a comment to this effect to enlighten future readers.

OK, new patch attached. Added comments, NEWS entry, texi doc, test case.

>>>   * The change to the code to call ar_emul_replace() inside replace_members()
>>>     looks wrong to me.  The current code will try to replace all of the entries
>>>     on the files_to_move list, and will set changed to TRUE if any of the
>>>     replacements succeeds.  The patched code will changed to FALSE if any
>>>     replacement fails, even if earlier ones succeeded.
>>
>> No, that's not correct. The patched code ORs in the result, so it will not
>> change any previous success into a failure.
> 
> Doh - OK, I misread this.  But I think that there is still a possible problem.  
> Since the result is ORed in, if there is a failed call to ar_emul_replace after 
> a successful one, changed will still be TRUE, and the failed element will be 
> removed from the chain.  This differs from the old behaviour where the element
> would not be removed if ar_emul_replace() fails.  (I am not sure however what
> the impact of this change will be).

OK, fixed this to preserve the original behavior for failed elements.

>> OK. Any suggestions on what exactly to check?
> 
> Sure.  I would suggest adding a test that checks to see that:
> 
>  ar cvL libfoo.a "/foo/bar/" foo.o
> 
> (something like that) actually creates a library with a libdeps element
> in it.  Take a look at binutils/testsuite/binutils-all/ar.exp where other
> tests on ar are run.  Basically you need to create a new proc to the file
> and then invoke it at the end of the file.  The new proc would probably
> look something like this:

Thanks. Had to tweak 2 lines but otherwise this worked.

> proc test_add_dependencies { } {

-- 
  -- Howard Chu
  CTO, Symas Corp.           http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun     http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
  Chief Architect, OpenLDAP  http://www.openldap.org/project/