Re: Manual page and library file

[Patrice Dumas]

On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 10:31:25AM +0000, Gavin Smith wrote:
> > Indeed.  And for the next release you could remove all the .la files.
> 
> What was the reason for removing the .la files in the first place?  Why
> would you expect that you could remove files that a package installs with
> nothing going wrong?  Is it usual to remove .la files in other contexts?

Hilmar may have a different answer, but it happens that in the past I was a
Fedora packager and the policy to remove .la files, which can be seen here
was already in place:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/#packaging-static-libraries

Here is an example of what is thought about la files:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/RemoveLaFiles#Summary

The reasoning is that on a platform with a good support for shared
libraries, there is no need for .la files once a software is installed,
either -rpath or adding a path in /etc/ld.so.conf should make sure that
shared libraries are found.  And for dlopened objects, there is no specific
need for .la files either.  As a side note, if I recall well, rpath is
also frowned upon in Fedora.

I actually am convinced by this reasoning, which is why I think that we
should try to make sure that .la files are not needed in Texinfo on
platforms with good support for shared and dlopened libraries.

-- 
Pat