Re: Replace ltdl with GLib's GModule

[Mike Gran <spk121@yahoo.com>]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 04:27:57PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > I think we should either fix ltdl (probably less work than porting Guile
> > to GModule, but also less exciting) or have a very basic wrapper around
> > dlopen instead of using ltdl (I think Andy had made experiments in that
> > direction.)
> 
> If you drop ltdl, the MinGW port of Guile will be broken, as dlopen
> there is not guaranteed to exist (it exists in one flavor of MinGW,
> but not in the other, which is the most popular one, AFAIK).
> 
> So my recommendation would be to fix ltdl.
> 

I must be said that the libtool mailing list appears extremely
conservative with respect to change.

I haven't evaluated it on a technical level, but I do see small
patches in GModule to handle things like UWP, while the last technical
change to libltdl was probably around 2011.

If GModule is up to date, it looks like there are only three families
of dynamic linking that remain: dlopen for UNIX-Likes, AIX's dlopen of
AIX-format .ar archives, and Microsoft's LoadLibrary.  MacOS's dyld is
gone.

Maybe when I have a moment, I'll strip GLib from GModule to see what
it looks like, or perhaps see what new information GModule contains
that could be flowed down to ltdl.  Not that I expect Guile to
necessarily incorporate it, but, because I find it interesting.

But, I don't see myself as finding any fun in interacting with the
libtool mailing list, so I probably won't do that.

Regards,
Mike Gran