Me and a friend are writing a library using allegro and SDL as a back-end (links with what's available when you compile it). There is however a problem when we make a program that links to our library, if we compile the library with allegro support enabled. I think it has to do with allegro's magic main, as we get the following error:

/usr/lib/liballeg.so.4.0: undefined reference to `_mangled_main_address'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Note that we don't include allegro.h in either our library or the program using it, we are still working on the SDL part.

OK, here's the deal. We are writing a GUI library which we want to be compatible with both SDL and allegro. When you compile the library it links with allegro, if you have allegro, and with SDL, if you have SDL. We are still working on the SDL-part, and haven't started with allegro yet, but allegro gets linked in when we compile our library, from the makefile.

It seems like using a library that is linked with allegro requires you to use END_OF_MAIN(), even if you don't use allegro in the rest of your application. And we were hoping there was some kind of clever workaround for this.

That doesn't make sense. You do not link a library in when you compile another library. A library is just a collection of object files which you then link with some other object files to make an executable...

You will have to remove the header inclusion also. Otherwise you will still get the error.

from what i'm reading if you are still not working with the allegro part and olny the sdl then you shouldn't have -lalleg anywhere on your makefile since you are not using it. only link it and include it when you use it.