From bug-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Thu Oct  2 02:00:28 1997
Subject: Octave dumps core when built in Linux/GNU with GNU libc.
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: "Ram'on Garc'ia Fern'andez" <ramon at juguete dot quim dot ucm dot es>
Cc: bug-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 01:53:16 -0500

On 29-Sep-1997, Ram'on Garc'ia Fern'andez <ramon at juguete dot quim dot ucm dot es> wrote:

| In Linux systems with libc 6 (GNU libc), octave dumps core at startup.
| 
| The reason is that when octave is linked, the arguments -lc -lgcc are
| explicitly placed in the command line of c++. This causes these libraries
| to be taken before libstdc++. GNU libc and libstdc++ have incompatible
| implementations of some objects, like standard streams (GNU libc uses
| vtable thunks for interfacing with C++, but libstdc++ cannot since current
| versions of the GNU C++ compiler have a broken support of vtable thunks). 
| 
| The fix is to avoid -lc -lgcc on the command line. I include here a patch
| to aclocal.m4 that prevents these flags to be added in GNU/Linux systems.

I changed the script to simply ignore -lc and -lgcc for all systems,
since I can't imagine that it could cause a problem, though someone
will surely prove me wrong now (or, more likely, moments after the
next release is announced)! :-)

Yikes, I'm somewhat embarrassed if this is the real reason that
caused problems for Octave on many Linux systems.  OTOH, it seems that
the order that libraries are listed should not have such a dramatic
effect...

Thanks!

jwe