On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 02:47:22PM -0500, Wietse Venema wrote:
> > The Tcl project (to which I contributed some code in the 90's) had at
> > the time dynamic loading support on a large number of platforms with no
> > libstool or autobloat. Just some sensible indirection in the Makefile
> > for CC and LD flags for creating shared libraries and a per-platform
> > switch for which flavour of dl-load API to use.
> >
> > The sensible thing IMHO (since Postfix does not attempt to support
> > never-before-seen platforms) is to do what Tcl does (or at least did in
> > the 7.4/8.0 time-frame).
>
> This means maintaining parallel sets of Makefiles: the existing
> Makefiles for static linking on older OS releases, and a new set
> of Makefiles for dynamic linking on current and future platforms.
Well, the same Makefiles could support static linking on some platforms
and dynamic linking and loading on others (known to support this).
The postfix-files file would then have to be partly machine generated,
as any resulting shared libraries would be platform-specific.
> It's not practical to verify dynamic linking on all older OS
> releases, and it's against my principles to force people to run
> only the latest Postfix release on only the latest OS release.
Sure, the idea would be to gradually introduct dynamic libraries and
dynamic loading of tables for a few new platforms at a time...
--
Viktor.
