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

[Andy Falanga (afalanga)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas Jahns [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2015 5:45 PM
> To: Andy Falanga (afalanga)
> Cc: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: How to use ld options correctly for --whole-archive in
> automake and libtool
> 
> 
> This is, from my point of view not so much an automake issue but a
> libtool problem: libtool for some reason I don't know decided to make -
> Wl, be the prefix for options to be passed to libtool when it's also
> the prefix for gcc and various other compilers (which serve as link
> editor frontend) for options to pass to the linker and then decides
> later to pass this on to the linker program (CC/CXX/whatever). These
> "options" are then re-ordered with respect to non-options (like
> your .a files) which makes it difficult to pass them in the correct

For this very reason, I decided to subscribe to libtool's mailing list
also and ask the same question there.  As yet, however, I've received no
responses.  Since the tools worked together, it still made sense to ask
here as well.

> position. You might be able to work around this with judicious use of
> extra -Wl, prefixes like this:
> 
> sata_la_LIBADD = -Wl,-Wl,,--whole-archive,../Shared/HwMgmt/.libs/
> libhwmgmt.a,../Shared/Misc/.libs/libmisc.a,.libs/libsata.a,-Wl,,--no-
> whole-archive -lz -lrt
> 

A very interesting suggestion.  I shall have to try this.  I found
something similar, after the many, many searches I've done with
Google.  It didn't have this many uses of "-Wl," though so that is
quite interesting.

> But what exactly is the problem with using e.g. ../Shared/HwMgmt/
> libhwmgmt.la? That sata.so will then require libhwmgmt.so? libtool
> should be able to set sata.so's rpath such that libhwmgmt.so will be
> found at runtime.
> 

This is a good question.  I have been asking myself the same thing.
Using these tools opens up a newer deployment method than we've used
to this point.  I do still have to answer a question of how I shall
statically link with other libraries, most notably Boost.  The systems
we deploy to will either not have these libraries altogether or they
have such woefully out of date versions that statically linking with
these other libraries is the only option.  How would I ensure I statically
link with these libraries using the automake process?