Re: GNU Libtool 2.2.8 released (stable)

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 8 Jun 2010, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
> > Obviously this is already working fine.  Windows LoadLibrary() is 
> > smart enough to know what it has already loaded.  The unloading 
> > sequence is much more interesting since something could be unloaded 
> > which is still being used.
>
> Looks like another interesting test case for 2.2.10 to me :)
>
> Do you feel motivated to write it?  Or at least add a description to
> the TODO file in the tests directory?

This seems more like a test of the OS than it would be of libltdl. 
We already know that libltdl does not normally *have* to explicitly 
load all of the dependencies in order for a program to run, but it is 
possible that the .la files contain some knowledge of library 
locations that Windows does not have.  Without the smarts added by the 
.la files, we become dependent on Windows default DLL search 
algorithms, which could potentially find a similarly named library in 
some other location.  For example, the Windows default search 
algorithm might require that the DLLs be in the executable search 
PATH, but LoadLibrary() is able to load a DLL via an explicit 
filesystem path (outside of the Windows search PATH) as well so paths 
in the .la file do add value.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/