[Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Yes, I don't think there's anything to be done in ethereal about this, its
> either AIX thats weird (or I'm just paranoid).

AIX is definitely weird in the sense that its shared library mechanism
appears to be quite different from the SunOS 4.x shared library
mechanism, and from the SVR4 SunOS 4.x-derived shared library mechanism
(the SVR4 mechanism, although not the SVR4 implementation thereof, is
also the one used by Linux and {Free,Net,Open}BSD), and, I suspect, from
the Digital^H^H^H^H^H^H^HTru64 UNIX and HP-UX shared library mechanisms.

> The basic symptom that made me give up on libtool is that when it
> creates a shared object, for example libglib.so, it then "makes"
> a libriary by just copying libglib.so to libglib.a. Then when a
> program is linked with -lglib, the AIX linker complains about duplicate
> symbols (p_xargc, p_xargv, ...) and the resulting executable core-dumps.
> 
> To correct the problem I just perform exactly the same compilation
> command, but with an output file "shr.o" (a good traditional name
> for a shared-object) and then use 'ar' to create the lib file. This
> lib will then link into the executable wiout creating duplicate symbols...

Hmm.  AIX folk should probably try to get libtool fixed, so that they
don't continue to have problems with stuff that uses libtool - GTK+
uses libtool, so that causes problems if you want to use GTK+-based
software, of which there's rather a lot....

See the thread in the GTK+ mailing list, the last message of which is at

http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-list/1999-November/0095.shtml

Craig Rodrigues (who's also on this list) spent a fair bit of effort
getting Ethereal to run on AIX back in early November; part of his
effort was getting GTK+ to work, and that thread discusses some issues
he had with it, some of which were, I think, due to some problems with
libtool.

The messages in the GTK+ mailing list were:

http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-list/1999-November/0076.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-list/1999-November/0086.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-list/1999-November/0087.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-list/1999-November/0091.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-list/1999-November/0093.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-list/1999-November/0095.shtml

There were also messages to the "gtk-devel" mailing list:

http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0029.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0030.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0033.shtml

(about a patch to fix the test for POSIX "getpwuid_t" in either the GTK+
or GLib configure script; the second message says the patch was checked
in - hopefully there'll be a GTK+ 1.2.7 and GLib 1.2.7 with that and
other fixes at some point)

and

http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0025.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0026.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0027.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0031.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0034.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0035.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0036.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0045.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0047.shtml
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gtk-devel-list/1999-November/0048.shtml

which discusses more libtool issues (and, in various messages, uses the
word "weird" near "AIX", and says

	AIX does its own peculiar thing. Shared libraries on AIX are 
	different from on any other system known to man.

).

> So now when I compile a new freeware, I log the output of make and
> go back and check each link step. And if I'm not sure if its right
> I do it again manually...

Sounds as if you *REALLY* want to get libtool fixed, then....