[C++-sig] Multiple typeinfos causing failure of exception catches

[Niall Douglas]

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I've been having major problems with getting exceptions to traverse 
shared object boundaries with Boost.Python using GCC and Linux. There 
is a core SO called libTnFOX-0.80.so which is linked against by 
TnFOX.so, the BPL extension and these are linked into TestEmbedPython 
which is an executable.

Now when python has an exception, I have it translate it into a C++ 
exception which it throws. In theory, TnFOX.so should throw a 
FXPythonException instance which in theory gets caught in 
TestEmbedPython. All is good under Win32, but on GCC & Linux you get 
"uncaught exception" and a terminate(). I have examined the dynamic 
symbol table in each binary and a typeinfo for FXPythonException 
appears in TnFOX.so and TestEmbedPython.

I did some searching and found:

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2002-05/msg00995.html

This problem reported by Dave in 2002 is due to a typeinfo for the 
exception type being emitted in each object it is used within. As 
they are marked weak, they get coalesced into a single typeinfo *per* 
*shared* *object* but these happily clash when multiple shared 
objects are loaded.

This then causes typeinfo comparisons to fail not because the mangled 
symbol is different but because the addresses of each are different. 
Dave suggested a typeinfo comparison by string and AFAICS it was 
refused on grounds of speed (despite that comparing hashes is the 
same speed as comparing addresses).

Dave - was this problem ever fixed? If not, I will submit a patch 
implementing typeinfo comparison by string comparison and we'll swing 
round the roundabout once again (maybe two years of experience has 
changed opinions).

BTW, your problem with python having to load extension modules with 
RTDL_LOCAL rather than RTDL_GLOBAL goes away if you use my -
fvisibility=hidden patch as no symbol clashes can happen.

Cheers,
Niall





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