Re: What does --with-pic really mean?

[Kent Boortz]

Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> writes:
<snip>
> If I knew more about why you want PIC objects, then I could say which of
> the two (convert all libraries to libtool-controlled ones, or just put
> the pic flag in CFLAGS) would be more appropriate.  Note that libtool
> convenience archives are not intended to be installed, for consistency
> reasons.

I want the "*.a" files to contain PIC objects, so that they can be
used to create other shared objects. What I really want is to create
the "*.a" files from the objects in ".libs/*.o", i.e. what is used for
creating shared objects. But there is no option for that that I know
of. So the only other option is to try compile all objects with PIC.

The reason for the need for static libraries with PIC objects is to
avoid problems with mismatch of libraries and easier install. If
module/shared library "foo" needs library "bar" from another package,
I only want to end up with "foo.so" that contains all from "bar.a",
rather than having two ask the user also to install version XXX of the
package for "bar.so".

I know that might be against what most think is "right" for
Linux/Unix, but remember there are lots of different Unix setups out
there, not all are Linux. And if I can reduce some pain for the users
by making packages more "stand alone", I do that,

kent

-- 
Kent Boortz, Senior Production Engineer
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com
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