linking of indirect dependencies (dependency_libs) on Linux

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Steve,

* Steve Langasek wrote on Wed, Jul 27, 2005 at 02:01:35PM CEST:
> 
> Is there no one out there who can answer this question from my mail of last
> week,

I've been away, sorry for the late response.

> or was the message simply drowned out in the flood of spam on the
> list? :)

We are _trying_ to work on this.

> On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 03:07:35AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> 
> > Last March, Scott James Remnant put together a patch which fixed libtool to
> > not gratuitously add indirect library dependencies to the linker line when
> > doing shared linking on Linux.  I was distraught to learn from him just
> > yesterday that this patch was never actually accepted upstream.  We've been
> > using it to good effect for the past year in Debian, and I was fully under
> > the impression that I could look forward to this change streamlining our
> > Debian development processes as more and more software began to use it
> > upstream, reducing the need to recompile software linked to libraries it
> > shouldn't have been linked to.  Evidently, this is not the case.
> 
> > I can find only one very short thread
> > <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libtool-patches/2004-03/msg00111.html>
> > about this patch in the libtool-patches archive, which doesn't appear to
> > include much discussion.  Can someone explain to me what the rationale was
> > for rejecting this patch, so that I can address those reasons?

Well, I can at least point you to much much more discussion about the
general issue.  Alas, other (libtool and non-libtool related) work has
kept at least me from progressing in this regard.  Also, the newer GNU
ld switches might want us rethinking this issue, maybe.

deplibs RFC discussion:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libtool/2004-12/msg00029.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libtool/2004-11/msg00455.html

There were also a couple of bug reports related to Debian having
link_all_deplibs=no, but the user expecting otherwise.
For example, if you want to use an uninstalled debugging version of a
library, but the missing explicit link only gets you the installed one
on runtime (I can search for the report if you're interested).

Cheers,
Ralf