Re: LT_* equivalent to AC_CHECK_LIB?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Mon, 3 Jul 2006, Tim Mooney wrote:
> I seem to recall discussion on this list in the past about why
> distributions were doing that, but I don't recall what any of the reasons
> were.  Has any work (perhaps as part of libtool 2.0) gone into addressing
> the reason(s) why they were doing that?

Operating systems with robust library dependency support don't like 
the libraries explicitly specifying dependendies on libraries they are 
not immediately dependent on.  Libtool has been specifying the full 
list of dependencies to the linker, as it finds them in the .la files.

You may see that autoconf encourages configure scripts to supply all 
of the library dependencies since the tests require it.  Likewise, 
libtool applies all of the libraries it is instructed to apply as well 
as additional dependencies obtained via the .la files.  A smarter 
build system would allow libtool to distinguish between immediate 
dependencies and "extraneous" dependencies and only apply the 
immediate dependencies if the OS/linke support it.

Bob