bogus handing of Linux shared libraries

[Philip Blundell]

I don't think this fragment from libtool.m4 is correct:

# This must be Linux ELF.
linux-gnu*)
  case $host_cpu in
  alpha* | i*86 | powerpc* | sparc* | ia64* )
    lt_cv_deplibs_check_method=pass_all ;;
  *)
    # glibc up to 2.1.1 does not perform some relocations on ARM
    [lt_cv_deplibs_check_method='file_magic ELF [0-9][0-9]*-bit [LM]SB (shared o
bject|dynamic lib )' ;;]
  esac
  lt_cv_file_magic_test_file=`echo /lib/libc.so* /lib/libc-*.so`
  ;;

There's no good reason to special-case some Linux architectures as compared to 
others.  At the moment, libtool doesn't properly build shared libraries on 
ARM (presumably also m68k, s390, hppa, mips ...).  I think you should just 
do "lt_cv_deplibs_check_method=pass_all" for all linux-gnu configurations.

The type of failures that one sees look like this:

** Warning: This library needs some functionality provided by 
libkbabeldictplugin.la.
*** I have the capability to make that library automatically link in when
*** you link to this library.  But I can only do this if you have a
*** shared version of the library, which you do not appear to have.

*** Warning: This library needs some functionality provided by -lgcc.
*** I have the capability to make that library automatically link in when
*** you link to this library.  But I can only do this if you have a
*** shared version of the library, which you do not appear to have.

*** Warning: libtool could not satisfy all declared inter-library
*** dependencies of module libkbabeldict.  Therefore, libtool will create
*** a static module, that should work as long as the dlopening
*** application is linked with the -dlopen flag.

p.