Regarding convenience libraries as aliases for objects

[Ed Sweetman]

In the various tutorials and documentation I've read, convenience 
libraries are said to be like aliases for object files that can be 
generated to either static or shared libs.  I want to use that idea 
literally.

My project has multiple targets that share various groups of source 
files. The source files are currently compiled as libtool libraries 
(static) and are not to be installed with the program. My intention was 
to use libtool to alias the object files and then link them directly (as 
if it was a .a) rather than pointlessly generating the .a and then 
linking.  Mostly this is done to save space and time, since the "libs" 
are just a way to get around compiling duplicate copies of the objects 
for each bin_PROGRAM target.  Of course, creating a .a duplicates the 
space, thus nullifying that half of the benefit for using libs during 
compilation.

I really dont see why libtool generates .a files when they're not going 
to be installed.  Since libtool knows the list of objects related to a 
".a" lib, the generation of the .a is a waste of disk space and time.  
Is it possible to have my makefile retrieve a list of the objects in a 
given libtool library so that i can just use that variable in the LDADD 
of the target?  Or is there a way to tell libtool to link a .la such 
that it directly links the .o's associated with it directly to the 
executable and skips the intermediate and useless generation of the .a 
file?


my makefile.am generally looks like this:

mylib_la_SOURCES = \
   lots of sources

mylib2_la_SOURCES = \
   lots of sources

mylib3_la_LIBADD = \
   mylib2.la
mylib3_la_SOURCES = \
   lots of sources

bin_PROGRAMS = \
   program1 \
   program2

noinst_LTLIBRARIES = \
   mylib.la \
   mylib2.la \
   mylib3.la

program1_LDADD = \
   mylib1.la \
   mylib3.la

program1_DEPENDENCIES = \
   mylib1.la \
   mylib3.la

program2_LDADD = \
   mylib1.la \
   mylib2.la

program2_DEPENDENCIES = \
   mylib1.la \
   mylib2.la