Re: [Bug-readline] readline-5.2 does not link necessary libraries, breaking parted

[Chet Ramey]

Adam J. Richter wrote:
>       When readline-5.2 builds its sharead library, it does not
> "-lcurses" to the ld command.  Consequently, the resultant .so file
> does not indicate the it needs libcurses.so.  So, attempts to link to
> link agaisnt readline using "ld --if-needed" will fail.  For example,
> the configure script for GNU parted-1.8.6 attempts to link a test
> program on my system thusly:
> 
>       cc -o conftest conftest.c -Wl,--if-needed -lreadline -lncurses [...]
> 
>       "--if-needed" does not consider symbols that were undefined in
> other shared libraries (such as readline requiring symbols from
> ncurses).  So, the link fails.  Without "--if-needed", the link succeeds.

Here's what I wrote in response to a recent query on the same subject:

It is the application's responsibility to decide which library (termcap,
curses, ncurses, etc.) should be used to provide the necessary symbols
and to link with it.  Bash uses the BASH_CHECK_LIB_TERMCAP autoconf macro
to do the job; other applications use similar mechanisms.

Chet
-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                       Live Strong.  No day but today.
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    address@hidden    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/