Re: How to determine the filename for dlopen()

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi!

On Mon, 2017-11-13 at 13:23:01 +0100, Ferenc Wágner wrote:
> I'm packaging a program which wants to dlopen() some library.  It finds
> this library via pkg-config (PKG_CHECK_MODULES).  How to best determine
> the filename to use in the dlopen() call?  It should work cross-distro,
> for cross-compilation and whatnot.  Is it always safe to use the SONAME
> as the filename?  I'm currently considering something like
> 
> ld -shared -o dummy.so $(my_LIBS)
> objdump -p dummy.so | fgrep NEEDED
> 
> coded up properly for Automake.  I'd be grateful for any insight.

IMO dlopen()ing an external library that is not part of the same
project is a practice that should be very strongly discouraged, if
not completely abolished.

Please see this very nice mail from Simon McVittie [S], my reply [G],
and Florian Weimer's [F], for several of the reasons why.

 [S] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2017/03/msg00164.html
 [G] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2017/03/msg00343.html
 [F] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2017/03/msg00346.html

Thanks,
Guillem