[xorg-bugzilla-noise] [Bug 400] The dlopen() loader fails due to circular dependancies between modules.

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http://freedesktop.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=400   
   

ajax at nwnk.net changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |ajax at nwnk.net




------- Additional Comments From ajax at nwnk.net  2004-06-08 09:26 -------
i've been doing similar work fixing up the ati driver to work with the dlopen
loader:

http://freedesktop.org/~ajax/

basically, drivers just love accessing data in other modules directly.  that's a
bad thing.  with libdl, symbolic data references have to be resolvable at
dlopen() time - unlike functions, which can be redirected to the linker and thus
resolved lazily.

usually this is a cry for refactoring; global variables are bad.  in libati i've
fixed this by one of two methods:

- move the functionality into a function inside the appropriate module (preferred)
- wrap the variable in an accessor function (ugly)

with those changes i can launch X, using only the libdl loader, on linux/x86,
and without special link-time tricks.  as an added bonus the code functions
identically between loaders, so it'll still work with the old loader if you
really want to.

alternatively you can tag the offending variables as weak references, but that's
a portability nightmare i'd just as soon avoid.

which i suppose means i'm volunteering to fix this.  patches to follow shortly.   
   
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