Re: diff/Makefile.am

[Pavel Roskin]

Hello, Derek!

> 1)  Distribute a stable release
...
>      b)  If installed version >= packaged version, do not install

It makes sence. I didn't know about that scheme. One important point here
is that you will be unable to implant hacks into the included library,
since chances are that it will be installed.

Returning to the subject, there is no such thing as a stable version of
libdiff :-)

> Is there really a good reason for that?  Libtool installs static & dynamic
> libraries together with its metadata in a single directory for each library,
> correct?  Why wasn't the metadata just installed in parallel as a third 
> library
> type?  i.e. a *.a, *.so, and *.la for each library would be installed next to
> each other in /usr/lib or wherever?
>
> For that matter, how hard would it be to write a workaround that installed all
> three types of libraries?  At the expense of a bit of disk space, the best of
> both worlds would then be available.

I don't understand what you mean, but probably we are talking about
different things. If you are linking against libfoo and it depends on
libbar, and you don't know that (and therefore done supply -lbar to the
linker) you may have a problem on some platforms.

On modern OS'es having shared versions of every library it's not a
problem. But you will certainly have a problem if you are linking
statically.

But if you are using libtool to link your package, libtool will consult
libfoo.la for dependencies and provide them to the linker.

This is a feature that makes it easy to work with dozens of libraries
without having to discover the full set of libraries needed for the link.
If you are using libtool, of course. Otherwise you must find all the
dependencies for all platforms in configure.

My point was that for CVS it's still possible to do the later. Even when
linking with various kerberos implementations. And even with subpackages
using libtool if you force them to build static libraries only.

But if we don't influence libtool in the subpackages in any way, it is
possible that CVS will have to use Libtool on the top level just to link
with the subpackages.

Anyway, zlib-1.1.3 is not using Libtool, so it shouldn't be our concern
for now.

Regards,
Pavel Roskin