Re: shared library dependencies (again)

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

"Gary V. Vaughan" <gary oranda demon co uk> writes:

> On Tuesday 01 May 2001  9:15 pm, Owen Taylor wrote:
> > I think there is a problem with going to libtool-1.4 at this point...
> >
> > As far as I can tell, it isn't really compatible with automake-1.4
> > (because ltconfig no longer exists), and I don't want to require
> > people developing GTK+ to install a patched or CVS version of
> > automake.
> >
> > So perhaps we need to hold off until this is resolved.
> 
> The patch is a one-liner against installed automake script, and is included 
> in the libtool-1.4 README,  For most developers (who continue to use 
> automake-1.4) it is a simple matter of (not tested btw):
> 
>    $ sudo sh -c 'cat README | (cd $automake_prefixdir/bin && patch -p0)'
> 
> ...or something.

The obvious patch, as you have it there, is subtly dangerous, because
it means if you run 'make dist' on a package without re-libtoolizing
(or running automake -a), then things will break in a confusing
manner.

But, yes, a similar patch that did version checks probably wouldn't be
much longer.
 
> If you don't mind having your developers upgrade to libtool-1,4, then asking 
> them to apply this patch isn't too onerous IMHO.  Automake-1.5 is almost 
> certainly several months away.

>From personal experience, there is quite a difference between
installing a new version, and patching your system locally.

With a local patch, you upgrade or switch to a different machine,
and things start breaking in a confusing manner, and you have
to remember that a patch was applied, and where it was.
 
> Besides, I imagine Debian (and presumably other distros) will soon start 
> shipping libtool-1.4 and a patched automake-1.4.  Perhaps that is a better 
> thing to wait for than automake-1.5?

Well, depends what you mean by shipping.... 

The availability of packages with the patch certainly helps, and if
they are standard for the major distributions, even if not shipped,
that helps too. But generally, I consider depending on patched versions
of dependencies to be a bad THING, something that puts a significant
barrier in the way of contributors.

As a last resort, we may go the patch-automake route, since I 
dont' want gtk-python to have to rely on a patched version of
GTK+ either, but its not something I'm comfortable with.

[ I've been trying to convince Tom Tromey that he should do a 1.4.1
  of automake which works with libtool-1.4. No luck so far. ]

Regards,
                                        Owen