RFR: JDK-8320005 : Allow loading of shared objects with .a extension on AIX [v9]

[Thomas Stuefe]

On Tue, 16 Jan 2024 08:36:49 GMT, Suchismith Roy <sroy at openjdk.org> wrote:

>> J2SE agent does not start and throws error when it tries to find the shared library ibm_16_am.
>> After searching for ibm_16_am.so ,the jvm agent throws and error as dll_load fails.It fails to identify the shared library ibm_16_am.a shared archive file on AIX.
>> Hence we are providing a function which will additionally search for .a file on AIX ,when the search for .so file fails.
>
> Suchismith Roy has updated the pull request incrementally with three additional commits since the last revision:
> 
>  - Update porting_aix.cpp
>  - Update porting_aix.cpp
>  - Update os_aix.cpp

For me the unresolved question is still:
- do we want an unconditional load of *.a for a given *.so (have yet to see any documentation for this a-file duality)
- if we do, do we want that to be bidirectional? Someone specifies *.a, do we want to attempt to load *.so?

When in doubt, we should just mimic what OpenJ9 is doing on AIX. But I would like a clear documentation as a comment in os_aix.cpp explaining the logic and referencing the relevant OpenJ9 files.

There are some minor issues with the code itself, but I will defer reviewing.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/16604#issuecomment-1907550400