[Caml-list] Re: We should start using -pack by default when building libraries

[John Carr <jfc@MIT.EDU>]

> What do you all think about this, is this a valuable solution, or are
> there profound reason for not going that way ? 


OCaml 3.06 does not support -pack when using native code on a system
without the GNU linker.  If you release software that depends on -pack,
I will not be able to use it.


A few thoughts on this topic:

1. The AIX linker can rename symbols, so AIX could be supported.

2. I may write a tool to rename symbols in an ELF object.

3. There are alternate implementations of the -pack concept that
do not require symbol renaming.  In particular, the container
module could be specified as an option to ocamlopt -c.

4. There is a conjecture that any computer science problem can be
solved by adding an additional level of indirection.

5. From experience, I can tell you that it takes significant effort to
make a linker-dependent feature work with many different linkers, even
when they all have the necessary functions.  (I was controlling symbol
visibility and early vs. late binding in shared libraries -- even the
linkers derived from SVR4 had evolved different syntax and control file
formats.)


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