On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 01:37:48AM -0700, Jonathan M Davis wrote: [...] > Unfortunately, I have no idea why the linking order even matters in > the first place, so I can't really say what we need to do here. > Hopefully, someone else around here _does_ know. But the issue does > seem to need to be brought up. [...]
This is because many linkers (including *nix ld, IIRC) resolve symbols in the order the libraries were specified on the command-line. I don't remember the exact reason for this, but it probably has to do with improving the performance of the symbol resolution algorithm. It's a legacy from the early days of linker technology. T -- VI = Visual Irritation