RFR: JDK-8320005 : Allow loading of shared objects with .a extension on AIX [v7]

[Suchismith Roy]

On Tue, 16 Jan 2024 16:12:16 GMT, Martin Doerr <mdoerr at openjdk.org> wrote:

> > I have tried to build jextract (https://github.com/openjdk/jextract/tree/jdk22) with LLVM (https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases/download/llvmorg-16.0.4/clang+llvm-16.0.4-powerpc64-ibm-aix-7.2.tar.xz). I noticed that llvm mainly consists of .a files. So, I think we need to support that for FFI compatibility with other libraries and open source projects.
> 
> Seems like this change is not sufficient for that. `clang` is compiled to `libclang.a` on AIX, but `libclang.so` on linux. I'm getting "System error: Exec format error" when trying to load `libclang.a` via `System.loadLibrary(libName);`. So the question remains: Are .a files really supposed to be dynamically loadable on AIX? If so, where is that documented?

Yes we have rhe case where .a files are dynamically loadable as well on AIX.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/16604#issuecomment-1905321150