Currently, I'm making my Makefiles manually.  I use the following 2
lines to compile a dynamic library:
gcc -fPIC -O9 -I. -c test.c
ld -Bshareable -x -o test.so test.o
...and all works fine.  However, I cannot find how to get automake to
compile the .so files, which are needed by my application.  I have the
following 3 lines in my automake file to compile test.so:
EXTRA_LTLIBRARIES = test.la
test_la_SOURCES = test.c
test_la_LDFLAGS = -module -export-dynamic $(LDFLAGS)
...Using those lines results in a .lo file being loaded, which cannot
be used by dlopen.  However, libtool has its own dlopen which can open
.lo files, but that is not what I want.  I'd rather use the system's
dlopen() suite.  If I change EXTRA to lib, it won't compile, and it
complains about duplicate _init and _fini functions in the source and
in /usr/lib/crti.o.  I'm using FreeBSD 4.7-STABLE, with gcc 2.95.4,
and automake 1.7.3.

Hello,

The correct way to build your library with the autotools is, as you
wrote, by the 3 lines:

lib_LTLIBRARIES = test.la 
test_la_SOURCES = test.c 
test_la_LDFLAGS = -module -export-dynamic $(LDFLAGS)

The compile-time problem is a conflict between your source code and
the crti.o object file. I'm not sure where it comes from.
Anyway, according to the 2 lines you wrote at the beginning of your
mail, you do not want to have the crti (does it stand for C Run Time
Interrupt ?) object file included in your library.
So you should take a look at the output generated by the autotools to
know why crti.o is included. And thus, find a way to remove it from
the compilation process.

If you want a complete tutorial of the autotools, take a look at the
autobook.
(Chapter 10 might specialy interest you):
http://zeus.cs.ccu.edu.tw/~ska89/autobook-1.2/autobook_toc.html

Or you can download the source and auto-files of small library that I
did last year (I actually learned the autotools this way):
http://www.geocities.com/imageinfo_cpp/packages/ImageInfo_1.0.tar.gz

Hope this helps you,
Schaffy