Re: [bug-gawk] [PATCH 2/2] Fix plugin load failure on OS/2

[Andrew J. Schorr]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 11:05:45PM +0900, KO Myung-Hun wrote:
> This limitation is from OS/2 itself. Considering this, libtool generates
> a DLL whose base name length is not longer than 8 chars. For example, it
> produces filefunc.dll not filefuncs.dll.
> 
> As a result, trying to load filefuncs extension with '@load filefuncs'
> fails, because there is no filefuncs extension on OS/2.

Sorry for jumping in, but this seems like a fairly serious defect in OS/2.
If we have two extensions named filefunc_a and filefunc_b, it seems that OS/2
will be unable to distinguish between them. Perhaps the correct fix is
for OS/2 to fail to install a shared library whose name is longer than
8 characters, instead of having libtool silently truncate the name to
8 characters. It is better to fail than give unexpected results, I think.

Regards,
Andy