How to use ld options correctly for --whole-archive in automake and libtool

[Andy Falanga (afalanga)]

Hi,

First of all, forgive my earlier e-mail of "Subscribe" to this.  I was a bit 
confused at the time reading the website.  Now for the question.

The team I work with has a project which is a C++ shared library which is 
exposed in two different manners.  The first is a traditional C++ library and 
the second is it's exposed, through Boost.python, as a module.  I found some 
great references for how to make this happen.  However, I've run into a 
problem: wrapping, in their entirety, the libraries used in making the python 
module.  In brief, the code is laid out thusly:

Main  (has a Makefile.am and configure.ac files)
  |
  |-Shared
  |    |
  |    |- HwMgmt  (Makefile.am, makes libhwmgmt.a and libhwmgmt.so)
  |    |- Misc    (Makefile.am, likewise for libmisc)
  |
  |-sata  (Makefile.am, produces libsatacpp.so and sata.so)
  |   |
  |   |-satacpp   (sources for the C++ API for SATA lib)
  |   |
  |   |-sata      (sources wrapping satacpp in boost.python)


Since we distribute this in both a C++ and a python API, I decided to simply 
use the autotools as they are intended to distribute the whole thing.  However, 
there is a problem.  When I build the whole thing, from "Main", the libraries 
which are built for sata.so (thy python module) aren't yet built.  So, they've 
got to be included, or linked, when we build sata.so.

These aren't simply convenience libraries.  So, for example, using 
"noinst_LTLIBRARIES = libhwmgmt.la" isn't acceptable.  However, the *.a files 
made must be entirely included into the python module.  In our former, 
home-baked, makefile arrangement, we just built them up and included them as 
follows:

gcc ... -Wl,--whole-archive /path/to/first.a, /path/to/second.a 
-Wl,--no-whole-archive

I'm trying to reproduce this using the automake tools.  I have this in the 
Makefile.am located in sata:

lib_LTLIBRARIES = satacpp.la
satacpp_la_SOURCES = ...

pyexec_LTLIBRAIRES = sata.la
sata_la_LDFLAGS = -module
sata_la_LIBADD = -Wl,--whole-archive ../Shared/HwMgmt/.libs/libhwmgmt.a 
../Shared/Misc/.libs/libmisc.a .libs/libsata.a -Wl,--no-whole-archive -lz -lrt

As I'm sure no one here will be surprised, this causes automake to fail 
because, "linker flags such as '-Wl,--whole-archive' belong in 
sata_la_LDFLAGS."  However, when I place this there, I find that Makefile.in 
and the final Makefile have things where I expect them, but when make runs, the 
libraries I've specified to be included as "whole-archive" are not listed 
between this option.  Instead, they are listed earlier and *nothing is listed* 
between -Wl,--whole-archive -Wl,--no-whole-archive.  I assume that libtool is 
doing this for me.

I'm using automake version 1.11.1, autoconf 2.63.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Andy