Re: Linking against indirect dependencies

[Szombathelyi György]

Bob Friesenhahn írta:

> On Mon, 24 May 2004, Albert Chin wrote:
>
> > dependency_libs doesn't contain just libraries. Maybe LDFLAGS as well,
> > like -pthread. BTW, is it _really_ a problem to link against
> > everything in dependency_libs? Indirectly, this is going to happen
> > anyway even if libtool doesn't do this.
Yes, it's a problem, when someone wants to package his 
application/library - most times a dependency hell will start. Did you 
see the thread I linked above?

http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=108534182408921&w=2

> Of course the correct answer is that not linking against indirect 
> dependencies is non-portable.  Certainly Microsoft Windows DLLs require 
> full linkage, and I believe/suspect that AIX does as well.
>
> Libtool always chooses the most portable approach and does not encourage 
> developers to use non-portable platform-specific approaches. If libtool 
> encouraged developers to use non-portable platform-specific techniques, 
> then it would be dealing a blow to the goal of supporting portable 
> software.
I thinked that libtool hides the platform specific differences, and not 
enforcing the lowest common features all of the supported platforms. A 
libtool using developer of course should not care about if linking 
indirect dependencies are needed or not, but libtool should. For me, 
portability means that you can recompile & relink the application on 
another platform, and getting the most out of the target platform is a 
good thing.

Bye,
György