Re: dynamic object searching (was: Re: Dynamic objects)

[David Boyce]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 4:34 PM, Paul Smith <address@hidden> wrote:
> Plus on UNIX any extension is acceptable since we're using dlopen()
> (even with the normal linker you can give any library name you want,
> it's only the -l flag that makes assumptions).  Maybe someone wants to
> write pattern rules to build their GNU make loadable objects with a
> suffix ".gmkso" to distinguish it (and use a different rule) from
> building normal .so shared objects.
>
> I want to be sure the benefits outweight the loss of flexibility before
> we go down that path.

Why not try opening the pathname as given, and if that fails append
the platform-standard extension and try again?

> It's probably a good idea to have make predefine a variable containing
> the "host" architecture, to avoid the need for uname.  We currently have
> an internal variable "make_host" which is the GNU autoconf --host value
> on systems where configure runs, and the various config.h templates have
> hardcoded values.  Maybe we could do something with this (just using the
> --host value might be too arbitrary, I'd have to look at the options).

I've twice submitted a patch to provide make_host as a make variable,
but they've gone into the ether. It's a one-line patch and hugely
useful IMHO considering the number of people who've had to reinvent
the $(if $(shell uname)) etc wheel. It's impossible to determine how a
given user or community will define "platform", so no variable will
work for everybody, but I think make_host is pretty hard to improve
upon.

-David