Re: LT_* equivalent to AC_CHECK_LIB?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Mon, 3 Jul 2006, Albert Chin wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 03, 2006 at 02:20:45PM -0500, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> > Autoconf can not depend on libtool, so Autoconf should not provide
> > such a macro, but it certainly makes sense for libtool to provide a
> > LT_CHECK_LIB as you describe.
>
> I disagree. Users shouldn't have to go through any more effort to use
> libtool. Libtool should replace things like AC_CHECK_LIB,
> AC_TRY_COMPILE, etc. with invocations to use ./libtool rather than
> $CC, $CXX, etc.

In this case, users would be doing less work.  With the current 
scheme, portable software needs to know about all of the library 
dependencies in order for AC_CHECK_LIB to work at all.  This can be a 
lot of work and is a common point of failure.  The current workaround 
is to use a -config script to obtain library dependency info.

Unfortunately, various OS distributions have made a habit of deleting 
the .la files so a LT_CHECK_LIB would not be as helpful as it might 
appear.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/