Re: patch for gcc.jam: use -h instead of -soname

From: Christopher Currie (Christopher_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-11-06 21:58:33

It is rumored that Andre Hentz uttered the following:
> The patch is attached along with a log message. In short, solaris LD needs
> -h.

Thanks for posting this, it's been on my TODO list as well.

> On a related issue, GNU uses -rpath while solaris uses -R; solaris
> doesn't take -rpath and GNU has another meaning for -R. Thoughts?

It gets worse. GCC on Sun can be built to use either linker, so if the 
above were strictly true, we'd need some way of knowing which linker was 
being used. I've toyed with the idea of adding another variable to the 
"using gcc" rule to support specifying the linker, but I'm not sure it's 
the the best solution.

Fortunately, GNU ld is a little smarter than I thought. The current 
documentation says:

"For compatibility with other ELF linkers, if the -R option is followed 
by a directory name, rather than a file name, it is treated as the 
-rpath option."

This is true for the most recent version of binutils; I've no idea when 
they implemented it, though. It depends on how important it is for us to 
support earlier versions. If it is important, we'll need to implement 
some sort of linker detection/specification.

Otherwise, on Solaris at least, the right thing to do is just have gcc 
use -Wl,-R,path and it should work with either linker. Whether this is 
true of other gcc supported platforms remains to be seen.

Comments?

Christopher