Re: How does one specify linking to 64 bit libraries when there is a choice?

[Bruce Korb]

Hi Andy, Ralf, et al.,

On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 6:23 AM, Andy Wingo <address@hidden> wrote:
>>   How much understanding of the machinery should be expected
>>   of the hapless project builder?
>
> I'm not sure, but: .....

I am sure of this:  It needs to be minimized.  If there are insurmountable
problems in figuring out that the lib directory is /usr/lib64,
then the builder has to supply it. I really doubt it is that hard to
figure out though.

>> [....] the assumption that a standard 64 bit
>> "Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.5 (Tikanga)"
>> installation would be compatible with installing Guile via
>>    ./configure && make && sudo make install
>
> This is incorrect,

You are correct.  The assumption is incorrect.  My current assumption
is that it is not insurmountably difficult to rectify this so that it will
become correct (or acceptable) to not supply ``--libdir=/usr/lib64''
to the configure command, hence:

>> Perhaps we can strive to make the assumption correct
>> in the future?
>
> This idea is attractive, if it can be done. But this is more an autoconf
> issue (setting $libdir) than a libtool issue, and it's not a Guile issue
> at all :)

Yes.  I've replaced "guile" with "autoconf" on the CC: line. :)

Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> (With my Fedora Packaging Committee member hat on) In Fedora
> and RHEL, users are supposed to pass
>  --libdir=/usr/lib64 to configure
> on x86_64 and

It is unclear that you-all can do otherwise, without having OSX-style
mixed word size combined libraries.  Autoconf does need to get
involved and work with libtool to get the information passed through.

Regards, Bruce