[Dwarf-workgroup] Re: [Dwarf-discuss] DWARF Issue 050808.2&body=Re: <ahref=http://dwarf.freestandards.org/ShowIssue.php

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 09:26:14PM -0500, Daniel Berlin wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-02-24 at 16:34 -0500, Ron Brender wrote:
> > Some environments can have "main" entry points in shared images that act 
> > as main routines iff the image is activated as a "main image". 
> 
> I was afraid you would point this out.
> Are these environments still around?
> 
> The last one I remember was BeOS, which is quite clearly dead :)

You can do this in ELF, so yes.  Run /lib/libc.so.6 on a GNU/Linux
system, for instance.

> > Is such a 
> > "conditional main routine" that same as or different than a main routine 
> > as defined above, or something else?
> 
> It would probably have to fall into the category of the above.  It would
> be up to the consumer to determine what the program they are running is,
> and thus, what image it should be looking at to find the "logical main"
> routine.

Yes, I think that's reasonable.  But this bit doesn't really apply to
the ELF implementations I am familiar with, since they can have
ELF entry points, but generally do not have a standard "main" function.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery