Hello, I'm a happy user of Libtool and Ruby, and I'm using them both in several projects, together with the Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator (SWIG). Everything works well under GNU/Linux, but things get a little bit harder on Mac OS X, and I'm posting this message on the Libtool and Ruby mailing lists to try and get some help from both communities. I apologize for the long message, but I prefer to give a clear explanation.
The situation is as follows: I'm working on a C++ library[1] (actually, this library is only composed of C++ headers, since it is a generic library using template classes and functions); this library dispose of bindings for the its data structures and algorithms for Python and Ruby, thanks to SWIG. SWIG creates C++ wrapper code to be compiled as dynamic module(s), loaded by the target language runtime, either directly (Ruby) or via a small glue code (Python). For the sake of portability, I recently started to use Libtool for the creation of these dynamic modules. As neither Python nor Ruby understands Libtool (`.la') libraries, loading hooks are used[2]. It works perfectly on GNU/Linux: the interpreter looks for the Libtool library, extract the real name (``dlname'') of the dynamic module from the `.la' file, and loads it. Things don't work as easily on Mac OS X, as far as Ruby is concerned. Under Mac OS X, dynamic modules produced by libtool (using the options `-avoid-version -module -shared') end with a `.so' extension (as in GNU/Linux); hence, Libtool libraries have a dlname ending in `.so'. But on Mac OS X the original `Kernel.require' method of ruby (used to load dynamic modules into the interpreter) looks for a file ending in `.bundle'[3] ! My current workaround is to produce a symbolic link `.libs/mod.bundle' to `.libs/mod.so' for each Libtool module named `mod.la' in the project. What do you people from Libtool and Ruby think about the behaviors of Libtool and Ruby? Should libtool create `.bundle' files on Mac OS X/Darwin? Or should ruby accept to load `.so' files as valid dynamic modules on this OS? Thanks in advance for your answers and advice! P.S. : We created a small project that summarizes this usage of C++, Libtool, SWIG and Python/Ruby, named after these languages/tools[4]. This experiment was successfully transposed into two project[1][5] to create Python/Ruby wrappers over C++ code. Notes: [1] The Olena project, http://olena.lrde.epita.fr [2] System hooks for loading Libtool libraries - in Python: http://svn.gnome.org/viewsvn/*checkout*/gnome-python/trunk/pygobject/ltihooks.py?content-type=text%2Fplain - in Ruby: http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~levill_r/olena/ltrequire.rb [3] Or `.rb', but they don't relate to dynamic modules. [4] http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~levill_r/c++-libtool-swig-python/c++-libtool-swig-python-0.01a.tar.gz [5] The Tiger project, http://tiger.lrde.epita.fr -- Roland Levillain LRDE - http://www.lrde.epita.fr _______________________________________________ http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/libtool
