[fpc-pascal] library initialization and deinitialization

[Seth Grover]

I've got a shared library (.so) I wrote in C, with initialization and
finalization code declared by using the GCC attributes constructor and
destructor. These init and fini functions simply print out "start" and
"stop" to stdout. The .so exports one function, which prints out
"Hello".

I've got a test program (also written in C) which calls the .so's
function. What I see on stdout is

start
Hello
stop

Just like you'd expect.

I wrote a Free Pascal test program which also uses the .so. However,
what I see is this:

start
Hello

So for some reason, the fini never seems to get called! I thought this
was strange, so I wrote a similar library in free pascal:

==============================================
library subs;

procedure SayHello (); cdecl; export;
begin
  writeln('Hello ');
end;

exports
  SayHello;

initialization
  writeln('start');

finalization
  writeln('done');

end.
==============================================

Again, I ran a c test program against it and a fpc test program
against it. The C program's output was:

start
Hello
stop

The freepascal program's output was:

Hello

What's going on here?

With humble thanks,

Seth Grover


-- 
Seth Grover
sethdgrover[at]gmail[dot]com
http://grovers.us/seth

Who is John Galt?