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

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 04:38:04PM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Monday 31 August 2009 15:56:06 Kurt Roeckx wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 08:55:21PM +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > > * Kurt Roeckx wrote on Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 10:31:39PM CEST:
> > > > I've mailed about this issue before.  What I think needs to
> > > > happen, and have proposed before, is:
> > > > - The .la file should only contain the libraries the current
> > > >   library links to
> > >
> > > That will make it impossible to support static linking against libraries
> > > which do not themselves provide .la files.  We cannot do this upstream.
> >
> > I don't see how it's different than what we have now.
> >
> > If I understand what you're trying to say is:
> > - The lib we're making now, liba, links to libb
> > - libb itself does not have a .la file
> > - to link to libb staticly, you also need to link to other
> >   libraries.
> >
> > Either you provided libb's depedencies when linking liba or
> > not, what is going to be in liba.la is going to be the same.
> >
> > And if you really want static linking to work properly,
> > you need some way to find out what libraries libb requires,
> > be that with a libb.la or libb.pc file.
> 
> and Ralf is pointing out that by trimming dependency_libs, you're breaking 
> libb.la when linking libb statically via libtool.  if there is no libb.la, 
> then the issue is irrelevant because we arent talking about libtool scripts. -
> mike

You mean that if liba.la was created when there was a libb.la that
did contain the needed info?  In that case trying to use liba.la
now already fails, because it's looking for libb.la.

In case liba.la never knew about a libb.la, or libb.a never existed,
I can't see any difference.


Kurt