xfce4-terminal not executable?

[Simon Marchi]

On 2017-07-25 15:19, John Found wrote:
> After some Manjaro Linux update, I noticed that xfce4-terminal is not
> "executable" file anymore, but recognized as "shared library".
> 
> I know that in Linux it is the same ELF format. And the terminal
> actually can be started from the icons/menus/console of XFCE.
> 
> But it is not recognized by WINE as a valid executable, so I can't
> start it from some Windows programs anymore.
> 
> Is this known and intentional change, or there is some bug in the
> build scripts? Or something else?

Is it possible that with the update to your distro, the executables 
started to be built as position-independent (PIE)?  IIRC, binaries built 
this way have the ELF type "shared object", not sure why.  For example, 
on Ubuntu 17.04 they are but on Ubuntu 16.04 they aren't:

ubuntu 17.04$ file /bin/ls
/bin/ls: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, ...
ubuntu 17.04$ xxd -s 0x10 -l 1 /bin/ls
00000010: 03

ubuntu 16.04$ file /bin/ls
/bin/ls: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, ...
ubuntu 16.04$ xxd -s 0x10 -l 1 /bin/ls
00000010: 02

So the change is likely due to a change in how your distro builds 
packages.  Some programs I use also tripped on this problem (e.g. 
Eclipse CDT) and had to be updated accordingly.

Simon