[vorbis-dev] ao hard codes -ldl in configure tests

[Kenneth C. Arnold]

According to Michael Smith (sometime around Mon, Nov 20, 2000 at 09:58:57PM +1100):
> At 02:54 AM 11/20/00 -0800, you wrote:
> >
> >
> >  In my opinion, using dlopen in libao was a bad choice in the first
> place.  Loadable modules make sense in a few cases:
> >
> >- When you don't want to release source to the code doing the loading but
> still want to allow users to extend it.  Obviously not a concern here.
> >- When there are zillions of potential plugins (image filters, for
> example).  Obviously not a concern here.
> >- When it is too difficult/time consuming/costly for the average developer
> to build the system that would do the loading.  Also obviously not a
> concern here.
> >
> >  libao is a _tiny_ piece of code that really does very little and is just
> being needlessly complicated by the dlopen() usage.  If I had to guess, I'd
> say that someone was interested in learning dlopen() and choose to do it
> here, but I think this is a bad design decision given the criteria above.
> 
> You missed out the fourth reason:
>   When you want to be able to compile plugins that require certain
> libraries, and have the rest of the thing work even if that particular
> library isn't present. This is important for people that don't compile it
> themselves. 
> 
> If we want esd support (puke!) in the binaries, then we either need
> dynamically loadable modules, or we need to make it REQUIRE esd. Same for
> alsa, and any other things that get added in the future.
> 
> It does make things overly complex, and makes the otherwise portable libao
> no longer so, but it is useful. 

However, for those platforms where there is no dlopen, you can simply
link in all the different output plugins that apply, and it may wind up
depending on more things, but likely these are already installed (see
Win32 -- DirectX). Speaking of which, anybody have a win32 output plugin?
I was working on one a while ago, but have no compiler for Windows so I
can't test it.


-- 
Kenneth Arnold <ken at arnoldnet.net> / kcarnold / Linux user #180115
http://arnoldnet.net/~kcarnold/



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