[Plplot-devel] Is there some important reason for using the -single-module linker option on modern Mac OS X?

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

To those here with knowledge of Mac OS X linking:

According to <http://www.manpages.info/macosx/ld.1.html> there exists
the following ld options:

"
-single_module 
When building a dynamic library build the library so that it contains 
only one module.

-multi_module
When building a dynamic library build the library so that it contains
one module for each object file linked in. This is the default.
"

We currently use -single_module for linking on this platform
(see CMAKE_USER_MAKE_RULES_OVERRIDE in the top-level CMakeLists.txt
file).

However that override was imposed 12 (!) years ago to address a
linking issue that I suspect no longer exists.  For example, a google
search for the terms <cmake "-single_module"> found nothing relevant
beyond the CMake mailing-list discussion I generated about this issue
back then.

So unless I hear from Mac OS X experts here that there is some
important reason for using the -single_module option for linking
dynamic libraries on modern Mac OS X, I plan (on Sunday to give you a
couple of days to respond) to drop this override completely to conform
to how other CMake-based build systems configure linking of dynamic
libraries on Mac OS X.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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