Re: AC_MSG_RESULT(patching libtool to fix HIDEOUS BREAKAGE) [was Re:dconf 0.5]

["Daniel Macks" <dmacks netspace org>]

On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 16:33:38 -0400, Havoc Pennington  wrote:
>
 > Or if someone could fix libtool so it isn't slow, and doesn't create
 > annoying .la files on platforms that don't require them, that would be
 > great too.

(drifting slightly off topic into another pet peeve...) .la files are a
crutch that makes it easy for developers to avoid remembering to link
against libraries that they actually use. That situation sucks! Yet
I've had mixed-at-best success in getting developers to actually do
that sort of linking. That is, if you directly use libfoo and libbar,
you have to actually pass the linker flags for both of them (via
listing in PKG_CONFIG_MODULES or whatever) rather than relying on
inheriting a libfoo->libbar linking. The .la files have data that makes
libtool automatically directly link against dependent libs on platforms
where this is an issue, and it's not an issue on linux if I understand
the default ELF linker correctly. I'd *love* if "actually do the the
correct explicit linking" became a GNOME standard, regardless of
whether "no more .la" is the trigger.
 
dan
 
--
Daniel Macks
 dmacks netspace org