Does uClibc support shared libraries?

[Rob Landley]

On Friday 20 April 2007 9:35 pm, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Thursday 19 April 2007, Ahan Hsieh 謝武漢 wrote:
> > Above is a FAQ of uClibc (http://www.uclibc.org/FAQ.html#shared)
> >
> > In my understanding, if shared library is supported,
> > toolchain and loader have been improved to support it.
> >
> > Toolchin has to compile the shared library as PIC and
> > transfer it to bFLT format. Also, some tricky mechanism has to
> > been implemented.
> >
> > Loader must be able to load the shared library.
> >
> > But I don't understand why should uClibc support shared library.
> >
> > If the uClibc support shared library on MMU architecture.
> > Why it can not support on MMU less architecture?
> >
> > If the shared library is compiled as PIC and transfer to bFLT format.
> > Why should MMU be used ?
> >
> > Any other factor that I have not consider?
> 
> i really dont know what your questions are here so i'm just going to ramble 
> off some random statements.  the ELF format is completely unlike the bFLT 
> format.  having ELF shared library support says nothing at all about having 
> bFLT shared library support.  uClibc has to implement the ldso for handling 
> ELF shared libraries, the *kernel* has to implement the binfmt loader to 
> handle bFLT shared library support.  you cannot do normal ELF shared 
> libraries on no-MMU because of the relationship between the sharable 
> read-only sections (.text) and the per-process writable sections (GOT/PLT).  
> i dont know what architecture you're dealing with but i doubt it supports 
> FDPIC ELF on no-MMU which means you're stuck with bFLT.

Speaking of which, does anybody know the state of the aout format?  I was 
pondering building an a.out format library/toolchain/mini-system (out of 
historical curiosity as much as anything; it's still in the kernel) but don't 
am not entirely certain how to go about it, and really know what supports it 
these days.

Rob
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