I wrote:
> Okay, it seems fairly close to RHEL-4 --- at least almost the same
> version of binutils, which is probably what counts here.
I was able to reproduce the problem on current RHEL-4, and on
examination I don't think it's really ld's fault. The problem is that
libreadline hasn't got a DT_NEEDED entry for libncurses nor libtermcap.
Apparently some benighted fool thought this was a good idea since then
you could use either one :-(. More recent releases have resolved the
issue by replacing both ncurses and termcap with libtinfo, which
thankfully readline now sports a DT_NEEDED dependency for.
Even assuming I could get Red Hat to change the situation in RHEL4
(which would be a long shot), it would take a long time if not forever
for the fix to propagate to derived distros such as Tatsuo-san is using.
So it seems we've got to deal with the situation as it stands.
I studied the ld man page for awhile but couldn't find any fix other
than the one Tatsuo suggests of trying to run the linked test program.
That means we have to guess at what to do in a cross-compilation.
I suppose the safest choice is to not try to use --as-needed when
cross-compiling, but does anyone want to argue for the other choice?
Whichever way we jump, it'd be possible for someone to override
configure's choice by editing the generated Makefile.global, so
my guess is we ought to favor the guaranteed-to-work option.
regards, tom lane
