FreeTDS Development Group

["Lowden, James K" <LowdenJK AT bernstein.com>]

All, 

(I realize this isn't a FreeTDS question, exactly, but it would be nice if
./configure worked out of the box with system-provided libraries, so it
seems worth pursuing.)  

What follows, for those who care, is a description of what I found trying to
link DEC's iconv library with FreeTDS.  I bumped into what I think are
linker symbol naming convention issues.  I worked around the problem by
telling DEC's linker that the iconv functions were (forced to be, -u)
undefined for my application.  That caused my application to link in DEC's
iconv library, which FreeTDS then could use.  A little weird, but it worked.


Here are the names:

# Gnu libiconv, compiled with gcc
$ nm  ./lib/.libs/libiconv.so |grep _open       
libiconv_open                    | 0004396972706048 | T | 0000000000000008

# DEC libiconv, compiled (probably) with DEC cc
$ nm  /usr/shlib/libiconv.so |grep _open
__iconv_open                     | 0004395907175552 | T | 0000000000000008
iconv_open                       | 0004395907176864 | T | 0000000000000008

FreeTDS (compiled with gcc) seems to want a "iconv_open":

$ nm ~/local/lib/libsybdb.so |grep _open
iconv_open                       | 0000000000000000 | U | 0000000000000000
tds_iconv_open                   | 0004396972706592 | T | 0000000000000008
tdsdump_open                     | 0004396972661864 | T | 0000000000000008

but we know that the Gnu runtime linker works with Gnu libiconv, so we have
to believe the "lib" prefix found therein isn't in the way.  

I guess that DEC's runtime linker is confused about what FreeTDS is
requesting, possibly because FreeTDS's request takes a somewhat different
form than it expects.  Or possibly because some level of nested .so
resolutions was exceeded.  Or possibly due to some error in my application's
Makefile linking instructions.  

Maybe this is all a red herring and I don't know what I'm talking about.  I
thought I'd post it in case it looks familiar to someone, or in case one day
someone else got similarly confused.  

Regards, 

--jkl