How do I link to a shared lib without having that lib's dependencies (the way MS link does)

[Ian Lance Taylor]

"Don Woodward" <woodward@woodward.org> writes:

> We're not even talking about an undefined symbol at all.
> The shared lib linked fine without any warnings or errors,
> How can linking to the shared lib produce warnings?
> 
> To me it's very clear cut:
> If A dynamically links to B, but not C, and B dynamically links to C,
> then A should have no linkage dependencies on C - it's not using
> C's symbols, B is and B has already linked.

If C no longer exists, then when you try to run A, it may fail.
Moreover, if the undefined reference in B is a function call to a
function defined in C, then running A will not fail immediately.  It
may run quite for a long time until it calls the function in B which
tries to call the function in C.  When the function in C is called,
the program will fail.

It is this prospect for delayed failure that makes it imperative for
the ELF linker to at least issue a warning, and possibly an error.  In
Windows, I believe the program will fail immediately.

I suspect that at one point the --allow-shlib-undefined option turned
off the error.  However, I suspect the behaviour mutated over time,
until right now it's not entirely clear what the behaviour is at all.

Ian