Re: libtool: link: cannot find the library `'

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Martin,

* Martin Paljak wrote on Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 01:23:51PM CEST:
> On 9/9/05, Martin Paljak <address@hidden> wrote:
> > On 9/9/05, Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> wrote:
> > >
> > > Please post contents of http/libhttp.la, and the output of the above
> > > command with "--debug" added before "--tag=CXX".
> > 
> > Everything should be attached - the debug used to link libhttp and its
> > makefile.am as well as the other libtool link command debug.
>
> I forgot to mention that it woks fine on debian unstable (libtool
> 1.5.6 and autoconf 2.59)

Thank you very much.  Let's see:

| libtool: link: cannot find the library `'

What a *shockingly* stupid error message to give the user.  Why in the
world has nobody ever fixed this?  Searching for it on the web finds
like hundreds of thousands of instances of this.

I am a bit ashamed.

Martin, can you apply this patch (if you only have a ltmain.sh, or
libtool script, you can easily make that change in those by hand)
and run again to see that it produces at least a sensible error message?

I'll leave identifying and fixing the actual bug for later (or someone
else, probably someone with darwin experience :).

Thank you,
Ralf

        * ltmain.in (link mode): Actually provide a useful error
        message.  Fixes long-standing shameful user neglection.
        Reported by Martin Paljak <address@hidden>.

Index: ltmain.in
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/libtool/libtool/Attic/ltmain.in,v
retrieving revision 1.334.2.85
diff -u -r1.334.2.85 ltmain.in
--- ltmain.in   24 Aug 2005 15:59:04 -0000      1.334.2.85
+++ ltmain.in   9 Sep 2005 12:23:10 -0000
@@ -2194,7 +2194,7 @@
        esac # case $deplib
        if test "$found" = yes || test -f "$lib"; then :
        else
-         $echo "$modename: cannot find the library \`$lib'" 1>&2
+         $echo "$modename: cannot find the library \`$lib' or unhandled 
argument \`$deplib'" 1>&2
          exit $EXIT_FAILURE
        fi