Re: LT_* equivalent to AC_CHECK_LIB?

[Russ Allbery]

Bob Friesenhahn <address@hidden> writes:

> Operating systems with robust library dependency support don't like the
> libraries explicitly specifying dependendies on libraries they are not
> immediately dependent on.  Libtool has been specifying the full list of
> dependencies to the linker, as it finds them in the .la files.

And mostly because, unlike pkg-config, libtool doesn't distinguish between
dependencies required for static linking and dependencies required for
shared linking.

> You may see that autoconf encourages configure scripts to supply all of
> the library dependencies since the tests require it.

Except in practice the tests don't on systems using shared libraries and
shared linking with reasonable shared library dependency support (the
default most places now).

> Likewise, libtool applies all of the libraries it is instructed to apply
> as well as additional dependencies obtained via the .la files.  A
> smarter build system would allow libtool to distinguish between
> immediate dependencies and "extraneous" dependencies and only apply the
> immediate dependencies if the OS/linke support it.

That would be very nice.  It does require input from the person building
the library, though, or very recent GNU ld with options that don't work
properly on some more obscure platforms.

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>