This utility takes a list of libraries in the form -llib1
-llib2 -llib3 and prints out lines suitable for inclusion in
an extension Makefile. Extra library paths may be included
with the form -L/another/path this will affect the searches
for all subsequent libraries.
It returns an array of four scalar values: EXTRALIBS,
BSLOADLIBS, LDLOADLIBS, and LD_RUN_PATH. Some of these
don't mean anything on VMS and Win32. See the details about
those platform specifics below.
Dependent libraries can be linked in one of three ways:
o For static extensions
by the ld command when the perl binary is linked with the
extension library. See EXTRALIBS below.
o For dynamic extensions
by the ld command when the shared object is built/linked.
See LDLOADLIBS below.
o For dynamic extensions
by the DynaLoader when the shared object is loaded. See
BSLOADLIBS below.
EXTRALIBS
List of libraries that need to be linked with when linking a
perl binary which includes this extension Only those
libraries that actually exist are included. These are
written to a file and used when linking perl.
LDLOADLIBSandLD_RUN_PATH
List of those libraries which can or must be linked into the
shared library when created using ld. These may be static or
dynamic libraries. LD_RUN_PATH is a colon separated list of
the directories in LDLOADLIBS. It is passed as an
environment variable to the process that links the shared
library.
BSLOADLIBS
List of those libraries that are needed but can be linked in
dynamically at run time on this platform. SunOS/Solaris
does not need this because ld records the information (from
LDLOADLIBS) into the object file. This list is used to
create a .bs (bootstrap) file.
PORTABILITY
This module deals with a lot of system dependencies and has
quite a few architecture specific ifs in the code.
VMSimplementation
The version of ext() which is executed under VMS differs
from the Unix-OS/2 version in several respects:
o Input library and path specifications are accepted with or
without the -l and -L prefixes used by Unix linkers. If
neither prefix is present, a token is considered a
directory to search if it is in fact a directory, and a
library to search for otherwise. Authors who wish their
extensions to be portable to Unix or OS/2 should use the
Unix prefixes, since the Unix-OS/2 version of ext()
requires them.
o Wherever possible, shareable images are preferred to
object libraries, and object libraries to plain object
files. In accordance with VMS naming conventions, ext()
looks for files named libshr and librtl; it also looks for
liblib and liblib to accommodate Unix conventions used in
some ported software.
o For each library that is found, an appropriate directive
for a linker options file is generated. The return values
are space-separated strings of these directives, rather
than elements used on the linker command line.
o LDLOADLIBS contains both the libraries found based on
$potential_libs and the CRTLs, if any, specified in
Config.pm. EXTRALIBS contains just those libraries found
based on $potential_libs. BSLOADLIBS and LD_RUN_PATH are
always empty.
In addition, an attempt is made to recognize several common
Unix library names, and filter them out or convert them to
their VMS equivalents, as appropriate.
In general, the VMS version of ext() should properly handle
input from extensions originally designed for a Unix or VMS
environment. If you encounter problems, or discover cases
where the search could be improved, please let us know.
Win32implementation
The version of ext() which is executed under Win32 differs
from the Unix-OS/2 version in several respects:
o If $potential_libs is empty, the return value will be
empty. Otherwise, the libraries specified by
$Config{libs} (see Config.pm) will be appended to the list
of $potential_libs. The libraries will be searched for in
the directories specified in $potential_libs,
$Config{libpth}, and in $Config{installarchlib}/CORE. For
each library that is found, a space-separated list of
fully qualified library pathnames is generated.
o Input library and path specifications are accepted with or
without the -l and -L prefixes used by Unix linkers.
An entry of the form -La:\foo specifies the a:\foo
directory to look for the libraries that follow.
An entry of the form -lfoo specifies the library foo,
which may be spelled differently depending on what kind of
compiler you are using. If you are using GCC, it gets
translated to libfoo.a, but for other win32 compilers, it
becomes foo.lib. If no files are found by those
translated names, one more attempt is made to find them
using either foo.a or libfoo.lib, depending on whether GCC
or some other win32 compiler is being used, respectively.
If neither the -L or -l prefix is present in an entry, the
entry is considered a directory to search if it is in fact
a directory, and a library to search for otherwise. The
$Config{lib_ext} suffix will be appended to any entries
that are not directories and don't already have the
suffix.
Note that the -L and -l prefixes are notrequired, but
authors who wish their extensions to be portable to Unix
or OS/2 should use the prefixes, since the Unix-OS/2
version of ext() requires them.
o Entries cannot be plain object files, as many Win32
compilers will not handle object files in the place of
libraries.
o Entries in $potential_libs beginning with a colon and
followed by alphanumeric characters are treated as flags.
Unknown flags will be ignored.
An entry that matches /:nodefault/i disables the appending
of default libraries found in $Config{libs} (this should
be only needed very rarely).
An entry that matches /:nosearch/i disables all searching
for the libraries specified after it. Translation of
-Lfoo and -lfoo still happens as appropriate (depending on
compiler being used, as reflected by $Config{cc}), but the
entries are not verified to be valid files or directories.
An entry that matches /:search/i reenables searching for
the libraries specified after it. You can put it at the
end to enable searching for default libraries specified by
$Config{libs}.
o The libraries specified may be a mixture of static
libraries and import libraries (to link with DLLs). Since
both kinds are used pretty transparently on the win32
platform, we do not attempt to distinguish between them.
o LDLOADLIBS and EXTRALIBS are always identical under Win32,
and BSLOADLIBS and LD_RUN_PATH are always empty (this may
change in future).
o You must make sure that any paths and path components are
properly surrounded with double-quotes if they contain
spaces. For example, $potential_libs could be (literally):
"-Lc:\Program Files\vc\lib" msvcrt.lib "la test\foo bar.lib"
Note how the first and last entries are protected by
quotes in order to protect the spaces.
o Since this module is most often used only indirectly from
extension Makefile.PL files, here is an example
Makefile.PL entry to add a library to the build process
for an extension:
LIBS => ['-lgl']
When using GCC, that entry specifies that MakeMaker should
first look for libgl.a (followed by gl.a) in all the
locations specified by $Config{libpth}.
When using a compiler other than GCC, the above entry will
search for gl.lib (followed by libgl.lib).
If the library happens to be in a location not in
$Config{libpth}, you need:
LIBS => ['-Lc:\gllibs -lgl']
Here is a less often used example:
LIBS => ['-lgl', ':nosearch -Ld:\mesalibs -lmesa -luser32']
This specifies a search for library gl as before. If that
search fails to find the library, it looks at the next
item in the list. The :nosearch flag will prevent
searching for the libraries that follow, so it simply
returns the value as -Ld:\mesalibs -lmesa -luser32, since
GCC can use that value as is with its linker.
When using the Visual C compiler, the second item is
returned as -libpath:d:\mesalibs mesa.lib user32.lib.
When using the Borland compiler, the second item is
returned as -Ld:\mesalibs mesa.lib user32.lib, and
MakeMaker takes care of moving the -Ld:\mesalibs to the
correct place in the linker command line.