Re: amendment to shared library policy
On Sun, May 18, 2003 at 07:43:30PM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Sun, May 18, 2003 at 04:26:35PM -0400, Jack Howarth wrote:
> > Looking at the number of shared libraries in Debian which prelink
> > has revealed to have undefined non-weak symbols (through incorrect
> > linkage), I think we need an amendment to clarify Debian policy on
> > such symbols. In a nut-shell, the policy should be that "No shared
> > library shall contain undefined non-weak symbols unless it is known
> > such symbols will be provided by the program dlopen'ing said library".
> > Matching this policy, dh_shlibdeps should be performing a 'ldd -d -r'
> > on each library in a package and issuing a warning if undefined
> > symbols are detected. The warning issued by dh_shlibdeps should be
> > simply that "Additional linkage *may* be required for this shared
> > library".
>
> Do you believe the wording proposed in bug #191369 captures your intent,
> or is something further needed? I'm not entirely certain how the
> requirement "undefined non-weak symbols" maps onto the tools I'm
> familiar with; running 'nm' on a shared library certainly gives a list
> of undefined symbols, but gives no indication as to whether they're
> weak.
That's not where the symbol's undefinedness is relevant, because it
could be provided by a shared library which is explicitly linked.
Using ldd as above recursively checks all DT_NEEDED libraries for
definitions.
--
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software Debian GNU/Linux Developer
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