A given (threaded) program makes use of libldap_r. It now also wants to make use of, say, libcurl. On certain systems, libcurl happens to be linked against libldap (not _r).

Eventually, both libldap and libldap_r end up in the process image of my program, and a symbol like "ldap_init" may point to the function of either library file. The threaded program may end up unexpectedly been given the non-threaded functions, depending on how the runtime linker loaded said libraries and binds the symbols. (I am seeing crashes in a large program's initialization because of this.)

There is a 7-year old post indicating libldap should get locking/ be replaced by libldap_r. http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap-devel/200909/msg00018.html To date, openldap still consists of the two libraries. What are the preferred options to go forward here?

* Killing non-threaded libldap in openldap for real If not, * Should curl have used -lldap_r instead of -lldap? * Should Linux distributions make libldap and libldap_r be the same thing? * Should libldap and libldap_r be augmented by ELF symbol versions? * All of the above? :)