Re: should libtool --relink expand lib*.la files before -L options?

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Mark,

* Mark Wright wrote on Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 04:17:11PM CEST:
> 
> In the libtool 2.2.4 relink command below, the ../../taglib/libtag.la
> refers to a libtag.so library in the build directory.  I'm, sorry about
> the zillion compiler options, however I think only the -L options,
> the ../../taglib/libtag.la and its corresponding
> -L/var/tmp/pkgbuild-mwright/FOSStaglib-1.5.0-build/opt/foss/lib -ltag
> options are relevant.
> 
> My hopefully simple question is: is there some way to persuade
> libtool/autotools to look for the libtag.so shared library first in
> /var/tmp/pkgbuild-mwright/FOSStaglib-1.5.0-build/opt/foss/lib/libtag.so.1.5.0?

I'm not sure I've understood this bug report completely, so I will give
a couple of general remarks.

While link mode will try to use the uninstalled libraries throughout
(so you don't pick up an old, previously installed one), relink mode
will try to use the installed versions of the other just-built
libraries.  That is done in order not to pick up paths to the build
tree (which would, on some systems, end up hardcoded in the resulting
binary).  Consequently, it needs to be ensured that "make install"
installs uninstalled libraries in the order of lowest-level first,
ones depending on those later.

Now, if the order in which those links are done on your command line
matters, then it looks to me like
- either that install order is not right,
- or there is some other library that links to libtag indirectly,
  IOW, some library dependency is not specified correctly in the link,
- or there is some completely independent library in that -L path
  that you'd like to appear early, that is needed but wasn't properly
  taken care of.

Does this help?

Cheers,
Ralf