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From: YATES@C.CHEM.UPENN.EDU ("YATES, JOHN H.")
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: f77 and forward reference lib searching
Message-ID: <9105222059.AA29476@noc1.dccs.upenn.edu>
Date: 22 May 91 21:58:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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I have a user porting a large code from Berkeley UNIX to the SGI System V.
After commenting out all the ranlib's in the makefiles,(and a few other
changes) he found that the many libraries are searched in a forward reference
manner only. i.e. if lib2 calls routines in lib1, they are not found.
(in fact, he tells me that it is a forward reference search only within
a given library.)

This is indeed documented in the f77 manual (page 1-8 in the
Fortran 77 Programmer's Guide, Document Version 2.0).

I have suggested the following for building his code.

Change:
f77 prog.o lib1.a lib2.a lib3.a lib4.a 

To:
f77 prog.o lib1.a lib2.a lib3.a lib4.a  lib1.a lib2.a lib3.a lib4.a  \
lib1.a lib2.a lib3.a lib4.a lib1.a lib2.a lib3.a lib4.a  ...

until it finds everything. It won't make the executable any bigger, but
it isn't very tidy. (a similar thing happened to me on a DEC-10 years ago).

Is there a better solution?

Thanks, John
yates@a.chem.upenn.edu