This post is meant to be a highly enlightening and entertaining explanation (or should I say it shouldn't cure anyones insomnia) of just how many things can go wrong with shared libraries if they are not worked with right regardless of platform.

Now I know this is an utter wall of text, but if you want to work with shared libraries you probably should read all of this. It'll get you up to speed on the theory of using them by preventing a repeat of my experiences, no war stories for you!

If you have inside knowledge of how shared libraries work, please expand upon this in the comments, perhaps we can get an article out of it for the site.

Some of the advice in this article may go against your previous experiences working with shared libraries. The recommendations here exist because the alternatives have seen to be problematic for a large portion of support requests over a two year period. If you understand what you are doing, you of course can disr