357055 - Use dlopen on HP-UX

Status: NEW

(NSPR :: NSPR, defect)

Description

[Wan-Teh Chang]

Right now PR_LoadLibrary uses shl_load to load shared libraries
on HP-UX.  We always pass the DYNAMIC_PATH flag to shl_load, and
we link our programs with the +s linker option.

I found that our programs search for the shared library in
the directories specified by the environment variable SHLIB_PATH,
but not LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

Since HP-UX B.11.11 and later have dlopen, and dlopen searches
the directories specified by both LD_LIBRARY_PATH and SHLIB_PATH,
perhaps we should use dlopen instead of shl_load.

I seem to remember that dlopen and LD_LIBRARY_PATH only
work in 64-bit mode or are only supported for IPF (Itanium).
Is there still such a restriction?

Can dlopen load a shared library with the .sl suffix?

If it's a good idea to use dlopen, what should be the minimum
HP-UX version to use it on?  B.11.00, B.11.11, or B.11.23?

Comment 1

[grace lu]

Support for shl_load library management routines may be discontinued in a future IPF/PA-64 HP-UX release. You are encouraged to migrate to the dlopen family of routines for shared library management if you use the IPF/PA-64 mode linker toolset. 
Do not mix use of the shl_load and dlopen APIs. 

The dlopen family of shared library management routines is available for the IPF and PA-64 linker. The following routines are also supported by the PA-32 linker:
dlopen 
dlclose 
dlsym
dlerror 
dladdr 

dlopen should load the .sl library.

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The bug assignee is inactive on Bugzilla, so the assignee is being reset.