[Desktop_architects] Re: Runtime dependency limitations

Dan Kegel daniel.r.kegel at gmail.com
Sun Dec 18 18:43:39 PST 2005


On 12/18/05, Mike Shaver <shaver at mozilla.org> wrote:
> Yes, and this is a limitation of the Linux linking model that I think
> should be addressed with some urgency, if it is a goal to make it
> easier for ISVs to adopt new Linux-desktop capabilities
> aggressively.  (I think that it should very much be a goal, since it
> has been and continues to be hard for ISVs to integrate well with the
> "latest" of a given desktop, without making that a runtime
> requirement or exploding out their build-and-ship configs.  Our GNOME
> file dialog trail of tears is but one example of many, I'm sure.)
>
> Maybe this is something like relaytool to wrap all the dlopen
> machinations necessary to emulate DT_USEFUL, but I bet that gets
> extremely exciting for those of us silly enough to use C++.  Maybe
> this is fixing the toolchain to support a DT_USEFUL-alike directly.

Mike Hearn (who wrote relaytool) said that Debian objected to it
(see http://plan99.net/autopackage/Linux_Problems#weak )
because it would defeat Debian's automatic dependency
scanning.  Presumably implementing DT_USEFUL directly
would make them happy.

Does anyone have a better link for the definition of DT_USEFUL,
by the way, or is this something Mike Hearn came up with himself?
- Dan

--
Wine for Windows ISVs: http://kegel.com/wine/isv




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