[Interest] qobject_cast, static libraries and plugins

[Jan Kundrát]

Hi, it looks that I cannot use qobject_cast in the following scenario:

0) Everything is built with -fPIC
1) class Foo: public QObject is defined in a *static* library libCommon
2) A plugin is statically linked with libCommon and has a function 
returning subclasses of class Foo; these subclasses are compiled into the 
plugin (main app doesn't include their headers)
3) Main application is statically linked with libCommon, loads the plugin 
from step 2) at runtime (i.e. from a shared library), calls the plugin's 
function and performs a qobject_cast<Foo*> to see if the returned instance 
is of the correct type

The problem is that qobject_cast returns zero while dynamic_cast works. 
There's something [1] suggesting that this is expected and that one has to 
move Foo into a shared library so that there's just one instance of a 
QMetaObject. Is that correct, or is the problem somewhere else?

This is in a code from my GSoC student which contains plenty of new 
features, so I don't have a standalone use case. What I'd like to know is 
whether this is *supposed* to work, or something that I shouldn't be doing 
in the first place.

With kind regards,
Jan

[1] http://qt-project.org/forums/viewreply/61603/

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