wrstuden@zembu.com (Bill Studenmund) writes:
> > The remaining alternative would be to duplicate the i386/a.out trick
> > of not resolving all symbols in shared libraries, on ELF and other
> > a.out platforms. I'm not sure that would be a good thing.
> 
> 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.

if you specify all of the right libraries, you should get the same
result from static and dynamic linking.