Re: Moving .la files

[Benoit SIGOURE]

On Nov 2, 2007, at 12:02 AM, Roebe XXX wrote:

> I am experimenting a lot on my system.
> For example i compile pango into /usr prefix.
> Then i delete it, and compile pango anew into another prefix.
>
> The problem is, if i then i.e. compile gimp, gimp "thinks" that
> pango is still at that old place, even though it is at some other
> place now.... does anyone of you know
> a) why
> b) how to resolve on this?
>
> The real problem is that right now, gimp will stop to compile
> throwing an error due to the .la file no longer there, and it
> seems as if the locations of .la files are somewhere cached or
> hardcoded, and i dont know where.

Hi,
the .la files are not relocatable out of the box.  When you compile  
The Gimp, it will probably link with many libraries, some of which  
were linked against pango when it was still installed under /usr.  In  
this case, these libraries will have dead references in their own .la  
files.  Libtool has this very nifty feature that it will  
automagically link against dependent libraries of the libraries you  
use (which is normally automatically done by modern linkers on modern  
OSes, but since it's not portable, we can't rely on this, and Libtool  
does it for you).  So basically, when you link against `libfoo' and  
there is a `libfoo.la', libtool will read it to find out what are the  
dependencies of `libfoo' and add them recursively to the linking  
command.  In your case, you're probably using libraries whose .la  
files are still referencing pango from under /usr/lib, hence the  
problem (that's just an educated guess, there can be other reasons,  
of course).

I hope I managed to make this clear :P

Cheers,

--
Benoit Sigoure aka Tsuna
EPITA Research and Development Laboratory

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