Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Q: library dependencies

[Nick Bowler]

On 2020-09-25, Howard Chu <hyc@highlandsun.com> wrote:
> Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> > ... static libraries do not technically have "dependencies" since they
> > only represent a compilation step (no linking).  If a static
> > library may also be built as a shared library then it may have
> > dependencies and should be described as such.
>
> I've always found this distinction ridiculously annoying. A
> program/project that links perfectly fine when its explicitly listed
> dependencies are shared libraries suddenly fails to link when you
> change to using -static. It's also simple to remedy - just list the
> dependencies inside a member of the archive file.

Libtool already implements a portable mechanism for ordinary (installed)
static libtool libraries to depend on other libraries, since libtool
libraries carry dependency information which is installed alongside the
static archive file.

This is also necessary on some platforms with shared libraries.

Of course, only packages that use libtool for linking can benefit from
the dependency information in libtool libraries.

> Please consider this thread and adopting the feature implemented there:
>     https://sourceware.org/pipermail/binutils/2020-September/113188.html

It's unclear to me what, if anything, needs to be done for libtool to
"adopt" this feature?

Cheers,
  Nick