building shared libfoo.la depending on static libbar.la

[Steve M. Robbins]

Hello,

I just ran into a head-scratcher using libtool 1.4.3.  I wonder
whether this has been addressed in 1.5?

I had previously built and installed a libtool library libbar
using --disable-shared.  Both the .a and the .la files were
installed.

In project foo, I build a convenience library libfoo that links with
libbar.  While configuring project foo, I forgot to specify
--disable-shared.  What resulted was that libfoo.la _was_ built, but
the binary that links with libfoo failed to link.  It appears that
libtool was trying to take apart libbar and link it all back into
libfoo.  The final link line for the binary omitted -lbar, and so
the symbols of bar were not found.

For a naive user, it would be nicer if some sort of diagnostic like
"you can't build a shared libfoo with static libbar" would help.

Thanks,
-Steve