Re: AIX support

Tristan Partin <tristan@partin.io>

From: "Tristan Partin" <tristan@partin.io>

To: "Srirama Kucherlapati" <sriram.rk@in.ibm.com>, "AIX PG user" <postgres-ibm-aix@wwpdl.vnet.ibm.com>

Cc: "Heikki Linnakangas" <hlinnaka@iki.fi>, "Peter Eisentraut" <peter@eisentraut.org>, "pgsql-hackers" <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>

Date: 2025-12-09T21:56:14Z

Lists: pgsql-hackers

Howdy,

Heikki asked me to look at the renames of the static Meson targets. 
I don't understand the reasoning for the changes. I am completely 
unfamiliar with AIX, so maybe it's obvious. Does Meson produce a static 
library and a shared library with the same file extension? If so, why is 
that? That's the only reason I can think of for making those changes. Is 
it AIX-specific or whatever OS you are testing on?

In your patch, I found a link to 
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/52EF20B2E3209443BC37736D00C3C1380A6E79FE@EXADV1.host.magwien.gv.at. 

> -> On AIX, you can do a static as well as a dynamic
> -> link against a shared library, it depends on how you
> -> invoke the linker.
> 
> When you link statically, the shared objects from
> the library are added to your executable as required;
> when you link dynamically, only references
> to the shared objects are included in the executable.
> 
> Consequently you do not need a separate static library
> on AIX if you have a dynamic library.

This seems to imply that we don't need a static library at all on AIX. 
However this email is also nearing 20 years old :D. Could we get away 
without the renames on the Meson targets by just not defining the static 
library targets?

-- 
Tristan Partin
Databricks (https://databricks.com)