Link (ordering??) problem

[Michael Stahl]

On 20/03/2025 01:13, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> Hi,
>    On my newly upgraded Fedora 41->42 beta desktop I'm seeing the link
> error:
> 
> $ make debug=t
> [LNK] Library/libsofficeapp.so
> /discs/fast/core/desktop/source/lib/init.cxx:6354: error: undefined reference to 'ublock_getCode_77'
> collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
> make[1]: *** [/discs/fast/core/desktop/Library_sofficeapp.mk:10: /discs/fast/core/instdir/program/libsofficeapp.so] Error 1
> 
> $ rpm -qa|grep icu
> libicu-76.1-4.fc42.x86_64

...

> where the interesting bit is:
>   -Wl,--start-group  -L/usr/lib64/pkgconfig/../../lib64 -ldbus-1  -L$W/UnpackedTarball/icu/source/lib -licui18n  -L$W/UnpackedTarball/icu/source/lib -licuuc  -L$W/UnpackedTarball/curl/lib/.libs -lcurl   -Wl,--end-group
> 
> so we've got -L/usr/lib64/pkgconfig/../../lib64 before -L$W/UnpackedTarball/icu/source/lib
> nd /usr/lib64/libicuuc.so points to the .76.1 version

that is indeed a problem, it is obfuscated -L/usr/lib64 and that should 
never be explicitly on the link command as it will cause exactly this 
kind of problem

we already try to filter it in configure.ac:

>             case "$f" in
>                 # let's start with Fedora's paths for now
>                 -L/lib|-L/lib/|-L/lib64|-L/lib64/|-L/usr/lib|-L/usr/lib/|-L/usr/lib64|-L/usr/lib64/)
>                     # ignore it: on UNIXoids it is searched by default anyway
>                     # but if it's given explicitly then it may override other paths
>                     # (on macOS it would be an error to use it instead of SDK)
>                     ;;

but it was cunningly obfuscated so the filtering doesn't work for you.

you can try to search in config_host.mk which system library is responsible.

imho it's a bug in the packageconfig file of that system library, these 
should never contain system paths that are searched by default anyway.