Re: Using convenience libraries with non-recursive make

[Del Merritt]

On 08/15/2012 04:46 PM, Diego Elio Pettenò wrote:
> On 15/08/2012 12:49, Del Merritt wrote:
> > All good questions; mostly because I am not completely sure yet that a)
> > I won't want to be able to install the sub-libraries later, b) my
> > hand-built makefiles do it this way already, so I was minimizing
> > change,  and c) this is my first run creating an autoconfiscated project.
> SO I would suggest you try the other solution first (have one huge
> _SOURCES variable). If 'make dist' is erroring out there might be
> something else to be fixed.

[Reponding on-list to what was Diego's private response to me; I hope he 
doesn't mind.]

I just finished an experiment with a single libfoo.a and all 
many-thousands of sources for libfoo_a_SOURCES.  The compilation worked, 
but I got the dreaded "make[1]: execvp: /bin/bash: Argument list too 
long" message when it tried to do the "ar".  To the shell's credit, the 
command line appears to be 134K bytes/characters in length, so I can 
understand why it would choke.  This doesn't bode well for the various 
"dist" targets.

> As it is, without seeing your code, I'd say there might be a simple typo
> somewhere, given the kind of complexity you seem to be dealing with when
> importing this, I'd try first removing the complexity and then building
> up from there, even if it means reporting another problem, this time
> with make dist.

One reason I've not posted my complete Makefile.am source is that it's a 
monster, size-wise.

I managed - with the use of LDADD and "AM_LIBTOOLFLAGS = 
--preserve-dup-deps" with the multiple-library version.   Thus:

   # Automake rules to build application.
   AM_CXXFLAGS = -I${includedir}
   ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I m4

   AM_LIBTOOLFLAGS = --preserve-dup-deps

   AM_LDFLAGS = -L. -L../lib  \
      -Wl,--start-group \
      ${LDADD} \
      -Wl,--end-group \
       -lother -l3rdparty -llibs -lasneeded -lhere

   bin_PROGRAMS = foo

   foo_SOURCES = a/deep/tree/here/foo__main.cpp

   LDADD = \
      lib_initialize.a \
      nearly 50 more libraries here...

   lib_LIBRARIES =  \
      lib_initialize.a \
      nearly 50 more libraries (same as in LDADD) here...

   lib_initialize_a_SOURCES =  \
      initializeStatics.cpp initializeStaticsStatements.h

   and 50ish more "libblah_a_SOURCES = follow", with lots of source
   references

I still don't have things set up to allow me to create a single shared 
(or static) library from the collection of 48 sub-libraries.  I.e, I'd 
really still like to link up all 50ish sub-libraries into a single 
libfoo.a (or libfoo.so).

I don't like the Linux-specific "--start-group...--end-group", and 
empirically those matter less than the fact that I've repeated my 
library list with the addition of "${LDADD}" in "AM_LD_FLAGS".   I've 
done a web search and I don't see a Correct Way to tell libtool, "hey, 
the following list of libraries have circular dependencies, so please 
iterate no matter what platform you are on".  Since I am targeting Linux 
and Darwin of various flavors, I'd like to make this work better.  More 
pointers are certainly welcome and appreciated.

In case it helps, my complete (sans most comments and blank lines) 
configure.ac looks like this:

   AC_PREREQ([2.59])
   AC_INIT([libfoo], [1.0], address@hidden)
   AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([foreign subdir-objects])
   AC_CONFIG_SRCDIR([initializeStatics.cpp])
   AC_CONFIG_HEADERS([libfooconfig.h]) # Currently not used! (a ToDo)
   AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR([m4])
   AC_PROG_MKDIR_P
   AC_PROG_CXX
   LT_INIT
   AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile])
   AC_OUTPUT

Thanks again for any suggestions,
-Del