Re: Request for option to disable building of static library

[Peter O'Gorman]

On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 09:37  PM, Sander Niemeijer wrote:
> In our situation it is not possible to just disable building of static 
> libraries on a global level for our package, since our package 
> provides multiple libraries and some of them need to be provided in 
> both static and shared versions.
> A few other libraries, however, are plug-ins (modules created with the 
> '-module' flag) that only need to be delivered as shared libraries. 
> For these specific libraries I would like to have an option (e.g. 
> -no-static) to tell libtool to omit building the static version.

Firstly, in case you were wondering why libtool builds static libraries 
even for loadable modules, libtool via. ltdl supports loading modules 
on systems without dynamic loading capabilities using the 
-dlopen/-dlpreopen flags.


> Does anybody know whether such a -no-static option for the libtool 
> link mode is feasable?
> Can this be implemented by just adding a -no-static option to libtool 
> that sets the internal libtool variable 'build_old_libs' to 'no' or 
> would such a feature require some more effort?

Adding this feature would not require significant effort, just add the 
new flag, set the var to no ought to work as you suggest. The question 
is rather would it be accepted. If you spent some effort with your 
makefiles adding the -dlopen flag, you would allow all static linking 
of your software which would mean you could support many more systems.

However, since you, as the author/maintainer, know what linking and 
dynamic loading strategies you support, and given that you do not 
support -dlopen/-dlpreopen, perhaps your -staticonly (or whatever) flag 
is a good idea???

I'd suggest you send your patch to the -patches list and see what 
happens.

Peter