On Apr 26, 2008, at 6:40 PM, Dmitry V. Levin wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I wonder why the libpopt.vers version script exports _init and _fini
> symbols?

Not so much exports the symbols as permits exposure.

>
> Dynamic linker calls _init/_fini anyway.
> Regular application can use these symbols only via dlsym(3).
>

The likeliest reason is that gnutls (which I used as a model for
drilling loader maps into rpm/popt) exported the symbols several
years ago, and its seemed like a good idea. No other reason I remember.

I'm more interested in tracking the symbols in the ABI, and preventing
accidental leakage of other symbols in libpopt (and rpm libraries) than
anything else.

Neither popt (with its POPT_AUTOALIAS table) and similar static arrays
exposed in the rpmlib ABI have symbols that qualify as an ABI.

73 de Jeff