Re: separating source and install name

[Perrog]

Hi Ralf!

Thanks for the pointers!

2007/4/28, Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden>:
> Hello Perrog,
>
> * Perrog wrote on Fri, Apr 13, 2007 at 09:04:57PM CEST:
> > Is there a special reason $program_transform_name macro is limited to
> > PROGRAMS primitive, and lack parallells to LIBRARIES and DATA?
>
> `info Autoconf "Transformation Rules"' has a partial answer to this:
> |    Whether to do the transformations on documentation files (Texinfo or
> | `man') is a tricky question; there seems to be no perfect answer, due
> | to the several reasons for name transforming.  Documentation is not
> | usually particular to a specific architecture, and Texinfo files do not
> | conflict with system documentation.  But they might conflict with
> | earlier versions of the same files, and `man' pages sometimes do
> | conflict with system documentation.  As a compromise, it is probably
> | best to do name transformations on `man' pages but not on Texinfo
> | manuals.
>
> Of course, for libraries there is a completely different reason:
> the library namespace is restricted by interdependencies[1].  Parallel
> installations of libraries with the same functionality are often done
> by installations into different libdirs, or different prefixes.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Cheers,
> Ralf
>
> [1] Example: package P builds libraries libA and libB, the latter
> depending upon the former.  With shared libraries, the name of libA will
> usually be hard-coded into libB.  Play the same game with installed
> libraries, and there is little point in renaming them at `make install'
> time.

In cases when you make a debug build, or static build, or some other
architecture build, it may be desirable to rename the installed library. For
example, libA_d is the debug version of libA. But this also has another
aspect... if we build libB_d, it may want to use libA_d, not libA.

I'v observed you may now (gcc 4.0) give linker the "path/to/library.a" or
"path/to/library.dylib", instead of using "-Lpath/to" and "-lrary" pair.  I
suppose this is the "right way" to link against specific library, instead of
fiddling around with the library's name.