Re: suggestion: default to libtool+shared library on *-gnu

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Tom,

> libtool offers no particular advantage, and is much slower to compile than
> the --with-shared option (which is what's generally used).

I agree with the "slower to compile", but that's of minor importance.

The advantage of --with-libtool, compared to --with-shared, is that it gets
the library versions right. --with-shared installs a file libncurses.so.5.7,
which makes assumptions about binary backward compatibility. See [1].

Note there is also a packaging mistake in --with-libtool in ncurses: It uses
the libtool that is found in $PATH, which leads to breakage on bi-arch system:
it tries to use a libtool that uses "gcc -m32" for a 64-bit build, or vice
versa. The right way to use libtool is to run 'libtoolize' once in your
package, and ship a libtool.m4 and a ltmain.sh from the same(!) libtool
version as part of the tarball. Then the above problem does not occur.
(It increases the size of the tarball, but that is of minor, no, sub-minor
importance.)

Bruno

[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual/html_node/Versioning.html