On Sun, 12 Dec 1999 16:42:15 -0500 
 christos@zoulas.com (Christos Zoulas) wrote:

 > Here's a brief update on what I am planning to implement for ld_elf.so
 > in order to solve the problem of selecting different libraries at runtime
 > depending on the capabilities of the hardware.
 > 
 > In /etc/ld.so.conf, add lines of the form
 > 
 > <library-name>	<sysctl-machdep-name>	<value>:<library-name> ...
 > 
 > For example ld.so.conf could contain:
 > 
 >     m	fpu_present	0:msoft	1:m387
 > 
 > etc.

Great!  This is cool!

How does it handle defaults, tho?  I suppose we have library build
infrastructure to take care of this?

Also, what about just portions of libraries?  e.g. BWX-optimized string
routines on Alpha?

Also, do the return values have to be ints, or can they be strings?

I'm thinking of the Alpha case again, here.  We can't just key off
"21164" ... BWX appears in "21164A" (EV56), "21164PC" (PCA56), and
"21264" (EV6).

        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>