design choices for a loadable module interface

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

--On Tuesday, June 29, 2010 04:15:11 PM -0500 Nicolas Williams 
<Nicolas.Williams at oracle.com> wrote:

> If you're using dynamic linking at all then there's no difference in how
> hard it is to set such breakpoints in either scheme.  If you don't agree
> then please explain in detail.

In gdb I can set a breakpoint on a symbol in a dynamic object that has not 
yet been loaded, such as a plugin.  The debugger will defer the symbol 
lookup until an object is loaded containing that symbol, which is extremely 
convenient.

It is easy to break on foo_do_something() even though the plugin foo has 
not been loaded.  It's rather harder to break on the plugin foo's 
do_something() if every plugin has a function by that name.

-- Jeff