Supporting ld's --as-needed flag

[Szombathelyi György]

Hello!

Some weeks ago I started a thread about how to _not_ link a library or a 
program against its indirect dependencies:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libtool/2004-05/msg00097.html

The conclusion was that libtool cannot solve this easily, because some 
platform must link all libraries, and platforms which are not require 
the full linking if shared libraries used, may require full linking when 
static libraries used. Luckily, the developers of GNU ld added a linker 
flag, --as-needed to achieve the desired effect. Unfortunately libtool 
will add this flag to the end of the compiler/linker options (if 
LDFLAGS=-Wl,--as-needed variable set), so the option will be useless. I 
posted a patch which simply puts $compiler_flags _before_ any deplibs, 
so GNU ld can do its job to remove unneeded libraries:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libtool-patches/2004-06/msg00002.html

This patch is against libtool 1.5.6. I understand that it may broke 
linking in some platforms (however I don't know exactly which platforms, 
I also don't know if there are linkers who needs the flags after the 
objects and libraries).
My questions are: is my approach good? Can this (or similar) patch go 
into CVS? If it's I will gladly create a new version against CVS. Or is 
there any other plans for supporting this very useful feature of ld?
I already compiled KDE with these changes on a x86/Linux, and the 
results were very convencing, the dependencies of all KDE libraries and 
applications went down significally.

P.S: A spam filter would be very good for this list.

Bye,
György