> Uh, for the definition given above ("auto-include"), indeed, ELF
 > shared libraries _should_ do the right thing, unless i'm horribly
 > misremembering.

They *can*, but enforcing it is another matter. As far as I know, the
current GNU linker isn't even capable of enforcing it on request.

There are a number of interesting ways to hang yourself with
cross-library dependencies, not all of which I remember any more. One
of the more dangerous is when you add some symbols to a new version of
a library and don't change the soname, but some of those symbols
happen to clash with some other weird library some application is
linked with. The dynamic linker will in some cases pick the wrong one
at runtime, and suddenly part of that weird library has been replaced
with other code that is maybe completely different. Woops. "But I
thought adding symbols was ok..."

There's plenty of room for engineering better shared libraries than
ELF, in any case.

-- 
   - David A. Holland             | (please continue to send non-list mail to
     dholland@cs.utoronto.ca      | dholland@hcs.harvard.edu. yes, I moved.)