David Leverton <levertond@...> writes:

> It's not just the order, it also breaks things that rely on the .init
> section being called at all to register themselves with the core
> application (with --as-needed, the .so doesn't get loaded in the first
> place, so it doesn't get a chance to run anything).

This really is backward, solution-wise: you expect the "core
application" to know enough of the plugins to link them together, but
not enough to call their init functions...

And still, it breaks not only with --as-needed but also with the Sun
linker, with the PE file format and other non-ELF file formats. So it's
really not a problem _limited_ to --as-needed.

Beside, you can _force_ a link by using --no-as-needed before a given
library, that's what it's supposed to happen if you don't want to be
helped by the linker.

To a very minimum this can be said to be a _clash_ between two
designs. Saying that --as-needed is _broken_ because it breaks this case
is _quite_ an exaggeration...

-- 
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò
http://blog.flameeyes.eu/