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Hi,

I am using Lua since quite a while with (amongst other things) hand-made packages written in C++. Some of these C++ packages are dependent on other C++ packages. And these packages use RTTI.

There is a disputed bug in Lua and C++ packages. dlopen() is using the flag RTLD_NOW only and *should*, for C++ libraries, use RTLD_NOW *and* RTLD_GLOBAL. I have seen several emails on the mailing list about this issue, but for some very obscure reasons, it seems the problem has been abandoned each time, which is a shame, I believe.

Quote from gcc FAQ: http://gcc.gnu.org/faq.html#dso ...

"If you use dlopen to explicitly load code from a shared library, you must do several things. First, export global symbols from the executable by linking it with the "-E" flag (you will have to specify this as "-Wl,-E" if you are invoking the linker in the usual manner from the compiler driver, g++). You must also make the external symbols in the loaded library available for subsequent libraries by providing the RTLD_GLOBAL flag to dlopen. The symbol resolution can be immediate or lazy."

Note the "*must* [...] providing the RTLD_GLOBAL flag".

So, at least with gcc (but think about how common gcc is!) C++ libraries support is broken under Lua.

Some people argue they do not like the RTLD_GLOBAL, but then it should be at least possible to pass the right flags to Lua at run time to fix this! (e.g. as supplied in Python). Right now people have to re-compile their own Lua to use any C++ libraries dependent on RTTI.

Thanks for your understanding,
Ronan.