Re: ltdl.m4 requires /usr/lib*/libltdl.la

[Mike Frysinger]

On Saturday 27 February 2010 22:55:24 Nathan Phillip Brink wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 06, 2010 at 08:33:20PM +0100, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > * Nathan Phillip Brink wrote on Tue, Jan 05, 2010 at 08:10:28AM CET:
> > > Is anyone willing to confirm/acknowledge/reject this bug report?
> > 
> > It is a Libtool bug (or limitation, I don't care) that indirect shared
> > library dependencies are not supported well.  It is a Libtool design
> > decision from long ago, and in hindsight probably a bug more often than
> > a feature, that *.la files refer to other *.la files, and linking
> > against the former fails when the latter are (re)moved.
> 
> On a modern GNU/Linux system which uses dynamic linking, no *.la files need
> to be installed except for those marked ``dlopenable''.

your narrow description ignores another pretty big consumer -- static linking.  
all the things you talk about have no bearing on static linking at all.

> > It is a user error to remove *.la files; in general, these are for above
> > reason, or for static linking or for libltdl usage (not only linking
> > against ltdl, but things like lt_dlopen("foo.la") as well).
> 
> In my current understanding, one is only allowed to lt_dlopen() libraries
> compiled with LDFLAGS=-dlopen. And *.la files are only _needed_ for static
> linking. For the particular systems and packages where neither of these
> two features of libtool are needed

these arent "all in" or "all out" "systems".  pretty much every distro 
provides optional static library packages.  so a system can easily change 
states from needing these to not.
-mike

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