Linking order not preserved in pkg.lflags

[simonratner]

When specifying additional libraries to be linked with pkg.lflags, the order of the libraries is not preserved. Instead, flags seem to be sorted in alphabetical order.

This is a problem when symbols in one of the libraries are defined in another, e.g. the following fails to link:

nm liba.a

00000001 T foo

nm libb.a

00000001 U foo

cat pkg.yml:

pkg.lflags:
  - "-lb"
  - "-la"

Normally, foo from libb will be added to the undefined list, and then matched to foo in liba once it is encountered. However newt actually executes gcc ... -la -lb, which strips the unused foo from liba before processing libb and results in an undefined reference to foo.

A workaround is to rename or symlink the libraries into the order you wish them to be linked 🤮