Re: Relocatable .la files?

[Benoit Sigoure]

Quoting Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden>:

> Hello Benoit,
>
> * Benoit Sigoure wrote on Mon, Dec 18, 2006 at 02:35:43PM CET:
> > what's the right why of distributing binary packages that are relocatable?
>
> With shared libraries: in general, that is not possible portably.
> Run paths encoded in libraries and programs are usually absolute,
> and some systems lack the features needed for a relocation to
> work well.
>
> And so the Libtool library abstraction that was conceived many years
> ago did not provide for relocatability even on systems that may allow
> it otherwise.  You can use DESTDIR at 'make install' time, and then
> move the package to the configured $prefix, but no general relocation.
> It may work in some special cases, but e.g., certainly not with library
> interdependencies.
>
> (I'm not stating my opinion on this here, merely some data.)

Alright I knew that, in that case, let's assume I only use static libraries on
Linux if that helps. What is The Recommended Way of distributing relocatable
binaries (actually relocatable libraries in this case) ?

Can we setup an install script that would take the new prefix and relocate the
libraries / relink them using libtool (assuming that the user has required
tools/compilers/libraries)?

> > $ ../configure -C --prefix=`pwd`/_inst && make all install
> > [...configuring liburbi-cpp...]
> > === configuring in jpeg-6b (/Users/tsuna/svn/liburbi-cpp/_build/jpeg-6b)
> > configure: running /bin/sh ../../jpeg-6b/configure
> > --prefix=/Users/tsuna/svn/liburbi-cpp/_build/_inst
> > --cache-file=../config.cache --srcdir=../../jpeg-6b
> > [...configuring jpeg-6b...]
> > [...compiling jpeg-6b...]
> > [...compiling liburbi-cpp...]
> > [...installing...]
> > $ cat _inst/lib/liburbi.la
> > # Generated by ltmain.sh - GNU libtool 1.5.22 (1.1220.2.365 
> > 2005/12/18 22:14:06)
> > [...]
> > # Libraries that this one depends upon.
> > dependency_libs=' /usr/local/lib/libjpeg.la'
>
> This, however, looks like a bug somewhere, iff libjpeg was built during
> the build.

You made an important point "iff libjpeg was built". No, it wasn't. Actually I
ran svn up, ran configure again to set the prefix and ran make. Several things
were recompiled, but not libjpeg. That's a bit unexpected but I can guess why
this might not be seen as a bug in itself.

> [SNIP]
> Thanks,
> Ralf

Thanks for your commitment to the autotools and especially to its 
mailing lists
:)

--
SIGOURE Benoit aka Tsuna
  _____
 /EPITA\ Promo 2008, LRDE