Re: removal of .la files from Debian and a possible solution to the libtool shared libs problem

[Anssi Hannula]

Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Tuesday 25 August 2009 18:37:54 Richard Purdie wrote:
>> On Tue, 2009-08-25 at 20:44 +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
>>> * Bob Friesenhahn wrote on Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 05:17:49PM CEST:
>>>> On Tue, 25 Aug 2009, Anssi Hannula wrote:
>>>>> I think the proper way to solve this is to not link to dependency_libs
>>>>> when linking dynamically on systems where it is not needed to link to
>>>>> those. I haven't seen any correctly working patches that implement
>>>>> this.
>>>> Relying on the OS's implicit dependency features seems to be an
>>>> approach which is fraught with peril.
>>> With GNU/Linux, and libraries all being in directories searched by
>>> default by both the link editor and the runtime linker, the problems
>>> are fairly limited.  IIRC Debian requires that you link directly against
>>> all libraries that you require directly.
>>>
>>> The problems start as soon as you link (directly or indirectly) against
>>> libraries in directories not searched by default.  IOW: typically
>>> anything not provided by a properly packaged Debian package, installed
>>> by the user or the system maintainer.
>> Surely at least on Linux the -rpath linker option would be a much better
>> way to solve this?
> 
> a combo of -rpath and -rpath-link ...

Well, -rpath is already added by libtool when a dependency is not in the
standard library search path.

AFAICS -rpath-link would be useful if we want to be double-sure that it
works, e.g. in case RPATH of a library/app has been tampered with. I'm
not taking a stance on whether -rpath-link should be added or not, though.

-- 
Anssi Hannula