I barely understand the voodoo magic behind libtool myself, but as PHK says, it "tries to hide the fact that there is no standardized way to build a shared library in Unix". I'd wager dynamic linking inherently poses such quandaries that are easier solved through kludges.
I'm not so sure. I always assumed that the problem with shared libraries was that they hit the mainstream at the height of the "Unix wars", when every vendor was trying to differentiate their own flavor with new features.
I don't think the value in the minor differences between, say, how AIX and Solaris support shared libraries are worth the headache to support them both. In an ideal world there would have been a standard in short order.
I'm not so sure. I always assumed that the problem with shared libraries was that they hit the mainstream at the height of the "Unix wars", when every vendor was trying to differentiate their own flavor with new features.
I don't think the value in the minor differences between, say, how AIX and Solaris support shared libraries are worth the headache to support them both. In an ideal world there would have been a standard in short order.