Also shared libraries may contain more than one interface implementation...
André Draszik wrote:
Hi,
Unless I'm missing something, it seems that DirectFB's module loading
code is utterly broken for modules where the constructor is not invoked
automatically, e.g. due to miscompilation. (I am not sure why it exists
in the first place, though. Just for old and broken compilers/linkers?)
Currently, DirectFB's lib/direct/modules.c will try to call a function
with a name of shared_library_name with lib and .so removed in case the
module did not have an __attribute__((constructor)) function. This works
for many cases of the existing modules in the DirectFB source tree, but
not for all:
1) the constructor function name of many (but not all) modules has had
the string "_ctor" added a while ago.
2) some modules don't fit into this naming scheme (all which use the
DIRECT_INTERFACE_IMPLEMENTATION macro to implement an interface), as
they use different cApITAliSaTION rules for the function type name vs.
the shared library name (e.g. IDirectFBImageProvider_GIF_ctor() vs.
libidirectfbimageprovider_gif.so).
These two actually mean that trying to call a 'default' constructor
function after dlopen() has not been helpful for solving anything for
quite a while.
In addition, and this is more severe, even if the constructor can be
fixed, we'll likely get memory leaks. The destructor will not be called
and nobody would notice, because things will appear to be working,
making it hard to find the reason. OK, one could add printf()s and
warnings, but still. Or of course add even more code to somehow work
around the issue.
The question to be asked - would it be useful? And it appears to me that
given the existing code is not working in many cases (and nobody noticed
in the last couple of years(!) (AFAIR)), and we may get memory leaks,
that today it is not. I propose the removal of the related code.
Please see the patch attached.
What do you think?
Cheers,
Andre'
_______________________________________________
directfb-dev mailing list
directfb-dev@directfb.org
http://mail.directfb.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/directfb-dev
