On 27 Sep 2000, Chris G. Demetriou wrote:

> wrstuden@zembu.com (Bill Studenmund) writes:
> > 
> > That's not for this discussion, but I think it would be a good
> > thing. Other OS's do it. You just have those symbols resolve to something
> > which sends a sigbus to the program or something like that.
> 
> are you talking about the current a.out linker's behaviour where
> linking a program will not fail if the shared libraries don't satisfy
> the program's needed symbols?
> 
> If all the symbols aren't there, that's a link error.
> 
> shared libraries may make certain things easier in programs,
> e.g. libraries implying that other libraries should be included in the
> link.  but if no library satisfies the symbols at all, that's an
> error.

No. What I was saying (and I'm sorry if it came out wrong) is this: say I
have a library which needs another library for some of its routines. If I
link in  this library, but don't use any of the routines which need that
other library, why does the program need to have it linked in (or have its
absense be an error)?

Take care,

Bill