Re: loading functions from a shared library

[Dave Love]

address@hidden (William M. Perry) writes:

> Correct, libtool did not support this type of abstraction at the time.  :)
> Nowadays, I would say we should just use the 'ltdl' library that libtool
> provides.  It does this and a fair bit more.

Yes, though I found it non-trivial to figure out how to drive libtool
for this purpose, and I don't understand some behaviour of the result.

> > I've sometimes been able to get convincing info out of the XEmacs CVS
> > logs in the past, but often not.
> 
> The diffs are a better source for this type of thing in some cases.

I found they're necessary, actually, but still not necessarily good
enough in general :-(.  (I laboured on this sort of thing quite a lot,
and I doubt there's a lot more of interest to look at.)

> But with ltdl being available and easily distributable with Emacs if
> someone doesn't have it installed, I would say it is a moot point.

I don't think the API is necessary either, at least for loading
modules per se.

The implementation I have just extends `load'.  It needs work on
understanding a couple of issues, snarfing doc strings and packaging.