Re: tests on AIX 5

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > supports many non-portable behaviors.  In order to support its
> > portability objective, libltdl should support the lowest (acceptable)
                                                             ^^^^^^^^^^
> > common denominator functionality, and this functionality should be
> > documented.
>
> This is *not* a sane requirement IMVHO.  This *is* a matter which can be
> argued about.  Might do it now, while many new things are envisioned
> and argued anyway:
>
> I think we should very much encourage using the portable behavior.
> But: If we never allow any features of the not-available-on-100% of all
> obsolete and non-obsolete systems, then Libtool is doomed to fail.
> Fail in the sense that it will actually become worthless over time.

You missed my use of the term "acceptable".  By acceptable I mean that 
we would analyze the capabilities of modern operating systems (the 
ones that 99% of the people use) and find the common subset.  There is 
a certain acceptable limit of functionality which should be present. 
Some capabilities may be eliminated because it is decided that they 
create situations where the software may fail arbitrarily or don't 
match the objectives of libtool/libltdl. A matrix of supported 
capabilities would be listed in the documentation.  The libltdl tests 
would validate the capabilities listed in this matrix.

A test failed because libltdl failed to locate a symbol from within 
the *main* executable.  If libltdl was executed from a shared library 
or module, I would be quite happy if it failed to locate a symbol from 
within the *main* executable unless the main executable was explicitly 
loaded.  If it did locate a symbol from the main exectable, then that 
indicates that symbols from the main executable may be polluting the 
namespace, which could lead to wrong behavior.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen