Re: ltdl bugs

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Jeff Squyres wrote on Sat, Apr 02, 2005 at 07:03:27PM CEST:
> On Apr 2, 2005, at 8:29 AM, Peter O'Gorman wrote:
> 
> >| I am not sure that this is a bug, if you check the return code from
> >| lt_dlclose(), you will notice that it fails.
> >
> >Hate to reply to myself, but I would consider that the memory not being
> >cleaned up by lt_dlexit() to be a bug. Darn, thought I'd get away with 
> >the
> >'not a bug' response.
> 
> Sorry - I should have clarified that in my original post; my sample app 
> is not checking the return code, but only for simplicity of the e-mail. 
>   Of course my real application checks the return code.  :-)
> 
> So there's actually 2 things:
> 
> 1. lt_dlclose() needs to free the memory.

No.  Not a bug.  I have audited this once, thought it was a bug, then
tried to fix it.  Found out all you need to do is think about the
residency of the module.   (Hint: try a file != self.)

If you had tried to execute the program in a loop, you'd found out that
memory will _not_ accumulate (IIRC -- if not, please report back).
Furthermore, if you (not possible without touching internals, I think)
set the residency to no, the memory would go away.

These 32some bytes you will just have to live with.

In another mail:
| Compiling with -pedantic gives:
| 
| -----
| lttest.c:12: warning: ISO C forbids assignment between function pointer
| and `void *'
| -----
| 
| Can a second function be added, perhaps lt_dlsymfunc(), that returns
| function pointers instead of (void*)?

Yes, surely.  We've learned about the TODO entry already.

Adding the interface won't help you as much as you think, though.  This
cast _will_ have to happen on each system using dlsym internally, all
you can get is hide this inside libltdl instead of your application.
(Note you are very right it _should_ be inside ltdl, for the very reason
that there exist systems with very different object and function
pointers.  However, I just don't believe you used one of them.  :)

Regards,
Ralf