Re: Validity of "fake" convenience library

[Dan Nicholson]

On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 7:43 AM, Peter O'Gorman <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Dan Nicholson wrote:
>  > On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 6:37 PM, Peter O'Gorman <address@hidden> wrote:
>  >
>  >>  I am pretty sure that you can similarly avoid the need for a fake
>  >>  convenience .la, but can not work it out without actually attempting a
>  >>  build :)
>  >
>  > How do you suppose that would work? Do I somehow tell libtool "this
>  > other static library is pic, I'd like you to disassemble the objects
>  > like a convenience library". If you actually want to try on
>  > xserver/mesa, I can point you to the necessary repos and what packages
>  > are necessary for the build.
>
>  Not sure, in order to avoid the need to have a fake .la file or a bunch
>  of fake .lo files, you would need to build with libtool. It might be
>  possible to do that by, for example, having a target in mesa that simply
>  outputs a list of sources to a file, and use that list in an xserver
>  makefile.am.

That was the idea the Mesa maintainer had, but I was running into
problems needing the list to be known at automake time. My autotools
skills have gotten a lot more polished since then, so maybe I'll take
another look at this possibility. Here's an old thread if you have any
interest:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2006-October/018656.html

Do you know if there's any way for automake to ignore the "include"
keyword? I.e., I really want the "include" to be processed by make,
not automake. The only ugly way I could think of was to include a
dummy file that had the real includes.

>  I have not really thought about it, and unfortunately, do
>  not have the time to help you. I am very happy that someone is doing
>  this however, as I have run into problems building xserver and
>  attempting to use a newer mesa. symlink-mesa.sh or whatever it's called
>  is not pretty.

Oh, I don't expect you to jump into this one. I'm very happy to just
get some advice from people with a lot of autotools experience. And,
yes, I'm pretty sure everyone hates the current situation and has been
bitten by it. But there's never been a real clear path to fixing it.

>  > Just to be sure, though: If I'm able to ensure that the static library
>  > is pic, are there any other barriers to the fake .la approach? I just
>  > want to make sure I know the limitations before proposing this.
>
>  It should work.

OK. I'll keep this patchset around as it seems to work. But I think
I'll pursue the other idea for a while, too.

--
Dan