Re: Library dependencies in gtk+

[Toshio Kuratomi <badger prtr-13 ucsc edu>]

On Sun, 08 Mar, 1998 at 12:59:47PM -0500, Owen Taylor set free these words:
> 
> Toshio Kuratomi <badger@prtr-13.ucsc.edu> writes:
> 
> > Ah, but libtool is supposed to decide internally whether it is safe to link
> > libraries in on the system it is invoked on.  So the dependencies should be
> > in the Makefile.am -- They just won't be used on all platforms.
> > 
> > Does 1.0f not work this way?  I'm working on patching library dependencies
> > into libtool and I'm pretty sure they will provide functionality in this
> > manner.  (Should appear in 1.1 or 1.2 release, after Gordon looks over my
> > patches and tests/incorporates them.)
> 
> The problem was (at least partially) that libtool 1.0f couldn't tell
> if a given library is static or shared. If you made improvements
> to libtool and Gordon puts them in, that would be great. 
> 
This is in my patch.  It should not link static libraries in anymore.

> But, I don't think we should try to work around libtool on this,
> because we don't have a good way to make sure that GTK is tested
> on a huge range of machines, and, in the end, shared library 
> dependencies are just a minor convenience.
> 
If libtool handles seperateing out systems that work and systems that don't
work, I would like to see the minor conveniences work right!

However, your next phrase is convincing as to why it's only a minor
convenience:

> Because shared library dependencies _don't_ exist on all platforms,
> and because people may want to link things statically, you should
> never write a makefile that just says:
> 
> LIBS=-lgtk
> 
>   or even
> 
> LIBS=-lgtk -lgdk -lglib
> 
> You need to have the X libraries there as well.
> 
Very true.  I didn't think that far ahead on this.  I do like the convenience
when I'm in a pre-Makefile stage  (while I'm still typing gcc -c
test-new-feature.c -L/usr/local -lgtk;./a.out) but the full link line needs to
go in by the time the code reaches distribution....

If libtool handles dependencies right in the future, I would like to see
Interlibrary dependencies work right for my convenience while developing, but
I'll shut up now because I see how minor a convenience it is. :-)

-Toshio
-- 
badger  \"The Difference between today and yesterday is not so much what has
@prtr-13 \ changed between then and now as what I hope to change by tomorrow."
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