Re: [PATCHES] Fix linking of OpenLDAP libraries

Kevin Brown wrote:
>>> Let me expand a little on some of the peculiarities of
>>> shared libraries on AIX:
>>
>>> - A normal AIX shared library is called libXX.a
>>> It is an 'ar' archive that contains the shared object(s).
>>
>> Ah, so the problem really boils down to funny naming conventions.
>> If they use ".a" for both shared and static libraries, how does
anyone
>> tell the difference?
>
> It sounds to me like there is no difference. Notice how his example
> ldd output shows dependencies on specific .o entries within the
> various .a files that reside on the system, rather than on the .a
> files as a whole. If those entries had been statically linked then
> they wouldn't have shown up in the ldd output at all.

That is not entirely true.
The difference between a static and a shared library on AIX
is that the *.o files in a dynamic library are dynamic objects,
produced by the linker (what is called *.so in Linux), and the
*.o files in a static library are the output of the compiler
(what is called *.o in Linux).

What IS true is that you can do a static build against a dynamic
library. Against a static library you can only do static builds.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe