noinst shared libraries?

[Michael Poole]

My program uses loadable modules for extensibility.  Due to the
dependencies in both directions between modules and the core program,
it seems easiest to implement the test suite by loading test modules
into the program.  I would rather not install these test modules
during "make install."

When I mark the test modules in automake as noinst_LTLIBRARIES rather
than pkglib_LTLIBRARIES, libtool and automake (obviously) treat them
as convenience libraries and generate static rather than dynamic
libraries.

I have two questions:

 (1) Is there some reason I am missing that makes loadable test
     modules a bad idea?  libtool's "finish" mode is not very
     well-explained in the manual for libtool 1.5.6, but I interpret
     it is intended for libraries that need something like ldconfig on
     Linux, rather than something for program modules.

 (2) If the answer to (1) is "no," is there some sensible value to
     pass as the argument to -rpath for that kind of module?  (Or is
     there some other way to force libtool to build the library as
     shared rather than static?)

Michael Poole