libtool problem with --whole-archive/--no-whole-archive

[Venkatesh Vivekanandan]

Hi All,

For our project we use automake/libtool

automake (GNU automake) 1.14.1

libtool (GNU libtool) 2.4.2

autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.69

We have,

platform/targetA/Makefile.am

platform/targetB/Makefile.am

example/*/Makefile.am

We wanted to link an external lib wrapped around --whole-archive/--no-whole-archive with the example application as given below,

platform/targetA/Makefile.am

LIBS += -Wl,--whole-archive

LIBS += -lmyextlib

LIBS += -Wl,--no-whole-archive

Problem is, platform linker command doesn't have --whole-archive/--no-whole-archive around the lib. Instead it comes later in the command line.

gcc:

-Wl,--whole-archive -lmyextlib -ldl -Wl,--no-whole-archive

libtool link:

-lrt -lcrypto -lmyextlib -ldl  -pthread -O2 -pthread -Wl,--whole-archive -Wl,--no-whole-archive

example/*/Makefile.am

When compiling the example app, linker command line just has -lmyextlib and doesn't have --whole-archive/--no-whole-archive at all.

How to propogate the --whole-archive/--no-whole-archive all the way down to example app linking?. Importantly, it should be around the -lmyextlib. I can make changes only at platform/targetA/Makefile.am as example/* is common across all other platforms.

Note: Tried libtool's suggestion of -Wl,'-whole-archive -lfoo -no-whole-archive' as mentioned in 

lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libtool/2002-05/msg00043.html but that didn't work.

Am I missing something here? What I am trying to achieve is completely wrong?

Thanks,

Venkatesh.