Re: [FYI] Cleanup of linux pass_all

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Jacob Meuser wrote:
> > The marker you suggest (special library naming) would cause builds
> > which do not know about the marker scheme to fail unless the linker
> > hides the special naming.
>
> how?  there is both libfoo.a and libfoo_pic.a.  They would be no
> worse off than now.  the thing is, libtool could know to pick
> libfoo_pic.a ass opposed to libfoo.a when it needs PIC.

Applications are not required to use libtool.  If a portable 
application not using libtool specifies -lfoo but the library is 
installed as libfoo_pic.a then linking will fail if the linker is not 
aware of the linking scheme.

If the application uses libtool to link, then libtool would know to 
look for libfoo_pic.a since it is aware of the special naming 
convention.

If existing libraries start transitioning from libfoo.a to 
libfoo_pic.a then there will be chaos for several years.  It would be 
like the Linux glibc mess all over again.

Therefore, the simplest solution is for all installed static libraries 
to be built using libtool, or at least have an associated libtool .la 
file. :-)

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen