320335 - remove unnecessary -lsoftokn3

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect)

Description

[Kai Engert [:KaiE:]]

Wan-Teh suggested to remove softokn3 from linker command lines, because it's not necessary, as it will be accessed using PR_LoadLibrary.

See also bug 255408.

More comments from Wan-Teh:
Although I suggested that you remove -lsoftokn3 from
the linker flags, it needs to be replaced with
-Wl,-rpath-link,... on platforms that use GNU ld
(Linux, FreeBSD, etc.), and with -dylib_file ... on
Mac OS X.  See
http://lxr.mozilla.org/security/source/security/nss/cmd/platlibs.mk
as an example of how to do the right thing.

I know doing the right thing is a lot of work, so
I give you my blessing to continue to link with
-lsoftokn3, especially in the --without-system-nss
case.  In the --with-system-nss case, we can add
-Wl,-rpath-link,... to the nss-config and mozilla-nss.pc
files.  Also, system nss is usually installed in a
standard directory like /usr/lib, which makes the
-Wl,-rpath-link,... flag unnecessary.

Benjamin said:
You can use the MOZ_FIX_LINK_PATHS macro to get the correct -rpath-link or
-executable_path link flags if you wish (we'll need to fixup autoconf.mk.in to
set it unconditionally, and upgrade a few of the oldest mac tboxen, but that's
already the plan).

Comment 1

[Wan-Teh Chang]

The reason -lsoftokn3 is not necessary is that
it is an implementation detail that we split
libnss3.so into libnss3.so and libsoftokn3.so
in NSS 3.4.  Applications only need to know
about libnss3.so, and libnss3.so is responsible
for loading its dependencies, including
libsoftokn3.so.  (libnss3.so is linked with
libsoftokn3.so, so libsoftokn3.so is loaded
automatically, rather than using PR_LoadLibrary,
when libnss3.so is loaded.)

Comment 2

[Phoenix]

Is this still actual?

Comment 3

[Kai Engert [:KaiE:]]

(In reply to Phoenix from comment #2)
> Is this still actual?

No, thanks for the reminder.

I checked mozilla/configure.in, and softokn is NOT part of NSS_DEP_LIBS

Comment 4

[Wan-Teh Chang]

Kai: thank you for checking.  I verified your conclusion.

Note: the important variable for this bug in mozilla/configure.in
is NSS_LIBS, not NSS_DEP_LIBS.