Ian Lance Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> I believe you could actually use a non-shared libperl.a on Intel Linux; >> just dike out the test for shared-ness in plperl's Makefile.PL. >> The reason it's there is we couldn't think of a direct test for >> position-independent code, which is the real requirement... > I don't have context, so I'm not sure why that would be the real > requirement. Position independent code is a mechanism to make shared > libraries more efficient. Most ELF systems support creating shared > libraries with position dependent code. It's just less efficient. Hm. Most of the systems I've dealt with will refuse to build a shared library from position-dependent code. If libperl.a contains PIC code then plperl can build a plperl.so that contains libperl linked directly into its .so, rather than using a cross-reference to a shared libperl.so. But with non-PIC libperl, you're flat out of luck. At least on non-ELF systems. > It's possible to test whether you can build a shared library with > position dependent code, if that is of interest. The GNU binutils > linker testsuite has such a test. And on a non-GNU-binutils platform, how do we do that? On any platform, how do we determine what kind of code libperl.a actually contains? regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html