FreeTDS Development Group

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT freetds.org>]

John Wythe wrote:
> I am not sure how to word the problem/fix to the libtool group, as I
> don't quite understand how ltmain.sh and configure generate libtool.  
...
> I never ran the pre-configure tools (AIX doesn't have the required
> versions), aclocal,autoheader,autoconf,automake.  

Here's the game: The autotools -- autoconf, automake, and libtool --
conspire together to create the configure script.  configure doesn't
*know* anything, except how to find out what it's told to discover.  Then,
based on its findings, it generates Makefiles.  

You don't need the autotools.  Or, at least, you're not supposed to, if
I've done my job correctly. (Of course you're welcome to use them and to
generate your own, possibly different, possibly working, configure script.
 But it will be identical to that shipped unless you use different
versions of the autotools or alter configure.in.)  

> I am not sure my fix would be generic.... I am wondering if there isn't
> something that needs to be changed in the Makefile's.   

In Makefile.am, you'll see we basically just list the inputs.  There might
be something we're supposed to do differently, but if so I don't know what
it is.  That's why I "blame" libtool (here): shared library builds work
for umpteen other OSes and not on AIX.  

> It looks like there may be a bug in ld on AIX 4.3.3 in that it doesn't
> resolve certain external references even though nm shows them in the .a
> and .so files.

Maybe.  This for sure: linkers are tricky beasts.  I wouldn't claim to
have found a bug until I'd understood and turned every plausible knob.  No
chance you have vendor support?  

Just for instance (as perhaps you know) the order of libraries on the link
command line matters.  More arcane, some runtime linkers will refuse to
load shared objects that are referenced by other shared objects.  That is,
no recursion; only the executable's symbols are resolved.  

> Any ideas where lt_archive_expsym_cmds is set?

No.  I looked.  <shrug>.  :-/

Is it in fact set to anything?  You might try "nohup ./configure --debug".
 

> Kind of getting off topic here, should probably be talking to the
> libtool or configure folks, like you suggest.

I think if you point at the FreeTDS tarball and say on this AIX system
libtool tries to link this way and it should link that way, that would be
a useful bug report.  I thought your previous message was both clear and
succinct.  I'd be interested in any feedback, too.  

Regards, 

--jkl