Problem:

Porting application from HPUX 11/23 PA-RISC to HPUX 11/23 Itanium.

Compile cobol module with cob, using ld to link

linker produces the warning:

ld: (Warning) Unsatisfied symbol "_mFldhandle" in file xxx.o

This cobol module is one several modules compiled to .obj for inclusion in a shared liabrary. The shared library is built, but at runtime the above

Unsatisfied symbol "_mFldhandle" is not being resolved.

SHLIB_PATHs, and LD_LIBRARY_PATH  are set

which /cobol/lib shared lib to use with the -l flag on the ld command to resolve this symbol

Resolution:

When linking Cobol you must use cob. . IBM, HP and other take the same approach with C . You must use the C tool to link C applications.

_mFldhandle is not defined in any library in $COBDIR/lib. This symbol is created by cob, locally to each shared object, as part of the link process. It is used as part of cancel processing, and shared object load/unload processing.

_mFldhandle is undefined in a shared object under PA-RISC also. The difference  is due to differences in the dynamic loader between HP-UX/PA-RISC and HP-UX/IPF. This is an OS issue. Problem may not show up on PA-RISC because of lazy binding. This defers looking for _mFldhandle from load time to run time. Provided _mFldhandle is never referenced there will be no problem,but if it is referenced  a 114 at run time may occur..

Changing from PA-RISC to IPF - completely different instruction set architectures, and different linker and dynamic loader behaviour. PA-RISC uses HP's proprietary dynamic linking. IPF uses standard SVR4 dynamic linking.

Using the cob command will be the least destabilizing change . It will have no effect on performance. It will make each compile an link common.

If ld is used, ithe ld options for each platform will have to be changed.