Re: Convenience Libraries

[Bill Northcott]

>> In general, Libtool won't prevent you from doing anything
> that the linker can.  This works by passing flags through
> Libtool with these flags:

Not really.  As has been discussed here before it will not let you produce 
a dynamic by linking static libraries, although this can be done with 
direct invocation of gcc or ld on MacOS X.

> And another spot where convenience libraries are discussed:

Unfortunately that is the one and only spot where they are discussed and 
it does not say much.

Perhaps it would help, if I clarify what we are trying to do.

The Swarm project has a hierarchy of three levels of libraries:
Basics like BLT, and libobjc
Swarm modules which are subsets of the API.  These reference symbols in 
the basics and also each other.
A swarm library which is the top of the hierarchy and uses symbols from 
all of the above.

Libtool appears to restrict options to an either or choice:
Either: Build everything static in which case every symbol will be 
incorporated into every executable built against the top level library.
OR: Build everything dynamic in which case everything has to be in the 
right place at the right times and a complex DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH set up to 
get the apps to run.  and you also get plagued with run time warning about 
not being able to find the build directories.  Might this last problem go 
away with --disable-fast-install?

What we would like to do is to build most of the lower level libraries 
static and link them into a single swarm dynamic library against which 
executables would be dynamically linked.  Libtool; appears to specifically 
rule this out.

Or can you explain how to do it?

Bill Northcott