There are a couple of problems with shared libraries. First, it annoys users if they have to specify LD_LIBRARY_PATH. There is a simple work-around for that, specifying -R followed by the same path used in -L when linking the code causes it to remember the path at runtime. (actually it is not quite that simple, it is -R on some machines, -rpath on others, and on AIX systems, -brtl (without the path)).
The second problem is tougher. We have a major new machine coming in soon, Blue Gene Light, from IBM. Our understanding is that the lightweight kernel running on each of the nodes will NOT support shared libraries.
So, we have been looking at what is required to build a static version of the library. That too is a bit of a pain. On many Unix machines, you cannot simply us the "ar" utility to build an archive file for C++ code that includes templates. It turns out that on those machines you need to invoke the linker, much as is done to build the shared library. On some machines it is "CC -ar -o libxerces.a ...", on others "CC -xar -o libxerces.a ...".
We have built a static Xerces library on Solaris and on Windows. We will be building it soon on AIX, IRIX, and TRU64 machines. I would be happy to submit the changes in the makefiles needed to build the static version for each of those platforms, with the hope that it will be included with future releases of Xerces.
- Norm -
Norman H. Samuelson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Lawrence Livermore National Lab 925-422-0661
P.O. Box 808, L-98
Livermore, CA 94551
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