FreeLists / openbeos / [openbeos] initialize_before, _init, etc.

["Andrew Bachmann" <shatty@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all,

There's been some discussion on the net list about a problem stemming from a 
situation where 
initialize_before wasn't called when a library was loaded.  I figured it was 
worth starting a 
thread in the main list about it since it seems to be something that we should 
(all) discuss.  In 
particular it seems that we can't generally rely on initialize_before.  It's 
not particular portable. 
(read: at all)  I thought maybe we could use these macros from kernel/image.h:

#define B_INIT_BEFORE_FUNCTION_NAME             "initialize_before"
#define B_INIT_AFTER_FUNCTION_NAME              "initialize_after"
#define B_TERM_BEFORE_FUNCTION_NAME             "terminate_before"
#define B_TERM_AFTER_FUNCTION_NAME              "terminate_after"

But you can't very well write anything like this:

void B_INIT_BEFORE_FUNCTION_NAME (void)
{
....
}

Because the name is quoted.  I tried looking a bit on the net about this, and 
in particular I looked 
for _init and _fini.  I found an interesting message:

http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/libtool/2001-03/msg00017.html

... which recommended the use of __attribute__((constructor)) and 
__attribute__((destructor))  I 
did not test these on our gcc.

I think we should come up with one strategy for doing this and hopefully it 
will be one that we 
can reasonably port to other architectures, eh?  Recommendations?  Maybe even 
just a set of 
macros that we can use to capture the magic names?  (in a format we can use to 
define the 
functions)

Andrew