[fpc-devel] LinkLib Issues In Lazarus and in FPC-2.0.2

[Daniël Mantione]

Op Mon, 17 Jul 2006, schreef Jonas Maebe:

> There's nothing C-specific about libraries, nor about the *config scripts. At
> most it would be linker-specific.

There is, those scripts mainly exist because a C compiler cannot determine 
the dependencies of a library. I.e. if you like libgtk you must also link 
libglib.

We don't need this in Pascal, the compiler can perfectly determine the 
dependencies by checking the used units. So the primary reason for this 
cruft is void in Pascal.

> > There simply should be no reason
> > why you want such complexity. A library has a name, you link to it by
> > name, basta.
> 
> A library also exist in at least multiple locations, versions (both
> ABI-compatible and -incompatible with previous versions) and implementations
> (e.g. a native Mac OS X GTK and an X-based one).

I don't see how *_config guards you against this:
* In case of a version change it will simply return the new version. The 
  .so symlink does this as well. If the new version is incompatible with 
  the old one, bad luck.
* It doesn't guard you against ABI changes, because that it determined 
  at the compiler level. I.e. there is no way to make cdecl code using a 
  register calling convention by using a linker option.

It helps for locations, but we already have a well adequate solution for 
that: Putting the location in fpc.cfg.

Daniël