Re: Problems installing dependant libraries

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Fri, 12 Mar 2004, Fredrick Meunier wrote:

> Hi,
> I have just come across the same problem raised in the thread "Library
> dependencies & make install" on the automake lists in January this year
> (<http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2004-01/msg00145.html>) in a
> reasonably large project.
>
> The last message in the thread from Alexandre Duret-Lutz suggests:
> "Another idea is to split the installation procedure in two
> steps: copy all libraries, and once it is done relink all
> libraries.  Would that work?  If so, we need a way to tell
> libtool to copy libraries without relinking."

The fundamental problem is that Automake does not have an overall
coherent understanding of the library dependencies when libraries are
built using a recursive build.  Without understanding the library
dependencies, it is difficult to see how relinking would work.

Relinking the libraries using an arbitrary order is unlikely to work
even if all the libraries are present since then the wrong embedded
library dependencies (for systems which support the notion) may be
picked up.

It seems that libtool already avoids relinking for DESTDIR installs,
and expects the user to use 'libtool --finish' at install time (a step
which is usually forgotten).  That means that libtool already
understands how to do a delayed relink.

So the solution is for someone to come up with a way that Automake can
have a coherent understanding of library dependencies (which are
already specified piecemeal in individual Makefile.am files).  One way
to accomplish this may be to maintain a top-level file which records
the order that libraries were linked during the build.

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