Re: libtool: install: warning: remember to run `libtool --finish /usr/local/expat/2.0.1/lib'

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Perrog,

* Perrog wrote on Fri, Dec 08, 2006 at 07:41:20AM CET:
> 
[...]
> $ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/expat/2.0.1
> $ make
> $ sudo make install prefix=/usr/local
> 
> Obviously, "make install prefix=/usr/local" forgets to update
> libexpat.la.

Correct.  Libtool violates the GNU Coding Standards in this regard.
There is a (weak) reason: in some situations, paths are hard-coded
in the library (and not only the text file).  I don't know a good
way to write an efficient portable Makefile that would detect user
overrides of 'prefix' at install time and relink in that case.

(Side note: in some situations, relinking happens anyway, but that
still won't do the right thing for you; see below.)

> In fact, when I read the "make install" console, it
> reports at one line:
> 
> libtool: install: warning: remember to run `libtool --finish
> /usr/local/expat/2.0.1/lib'

Right.  The reason is that the typical case where prefix at 'make' time
and prefix at 'make install' differ is because of a staging install:
  make install DESTDIR=/tmp/prefix

where later, possibly on a different system, the library will appear
below the originally configured prefix.  (If the Makefile does not
support DESTDIR, that would amount to changing prefix; libtool cannot
detect the difference at the moment, but it works well only in the case
of a string prefixed to the value that `prefix' had at the time the
library was created, unfortunately.)

> so I decided to clean and reconfigure expat
> $ cd expat
> $ make clean
> $ ./configure
> $ make
> $ sudo make install

You can optimize this a bit, in case libtool is the only problematic bit
here; in that case, it should be sufficient to
  find . -name \*.la | xargs ./libtool --mode=clean rm -f
  make prefix=/new/prefix
  sudo make install prefix/new/prefix

(for non-GNU make, use the following instead:
  prefix=/new/prefix make -e ... )

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Ralf