Re: LIBLTDL

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Bob,

On 3 May 2008, at 17:40, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> For GraphicsMagick I need to maintain a GraphicsMagick-config script  
> which contains such things as the list of libraries necessary to  
> link. The conditionally installed libltdl seems to make this  
> difficult to figure out.

I think installing libltdl from a parent package is a bad enough idea  
that we should consider removing the option.  Only libtool itself  
should really install a libltdl.

Sane options are to link against the installed libltdl if it is "good  
enough" (whatever that means) or use a convenience libltdl otherwise.

> If enable_ltdl_convenience is 'yes' then it is wrong to list -lltdl  
> as needed but if enable_ltdl_install is 'yes' and  
> enable_ltdl_convenience is 'no, then it appears that -lltdl should  
> be listed as a dependency.
>
> In GraphicsMagick things are even more confusing since for a static  
> build, libltdl is not used at all.
>
> It is necessary to build this logic out of internal configure  
> variables.  A bunch of existing substitutions will need to change in  
> scripts and Makefiles.  Ugh!

We should try to wrap this logic up in a macro for libtool-2.4 then.   
Although, just because libltdl itself provides a lot of flexibility in  
how it can be built, linked and installed, doesn't mean that the  
package that uses it needs to provide all those build options too.   
You might say that whenever GraphicsMagick links against libltdl it  
will always use a convenience libltdl...

> It seems that the GM 1.2 release is a bit botched since I did not  
> take the time to think through the convoluted logic.
>
> I suspect that other packages will be bit by this as well.


Bummer :-(

Cheers,
        Gary
--
  ())_.              Email me: address@hidden
  ( '/           Read my blog: http://blog.azazil.net
  / )=         ...and my book: http://sources.redhat.com/autobook
`(_~)_

PGP.sig
Description: This is a digitally signed message part