Josh Hurst wrote:
> On 2/20/06, Andrew Porter <andy@defsdoor.org> wrote:
>> On Sat, 2006-02-18 at 14:19 +0100, Josh Hurst wrote:
>>> Does the Debian ksh93 package include libast and libshell?
>>
>> No -
[snip]
> Seems these libraries are statically linked. It may be worth to think
> about providing shared library versions since there are many
> applications which can use libshell and libast. For example AT&T
> claims a 30%+ performance improvement for perl applications if sfio
> (provided by libast) is used instead of stdio.
There is already a libast in Debian:
benjo (sid)[4]:~% apt-file search libast.so
libast2: usr/lib/libast.so.2
libast2: usr/lib/libast.so.2.0.0
libast2-dev: usr/lib/libast.so
benjo (sid)[8]:~% apt-cache show libast2
[snip]
Description: the Library of Assorted Spiffy Things
LibAST is the Library of Assorted Spiffy Things. It contains many
spiffy things, and it is a library. Thus, the ever-so-creative name.
LibAST has been previously known as libmej, the Eterm helper library
which nobody really understood and certainly never used. ...
Is this the same libast that you mean? If not, then providing the ksh
libast in Debian would require one of the two libraries to change its
name (Policy, Section 10.1 - ugh, this will create a mess when applied
to libraries). This may be why the ksh maintainer(s) decided to link it
statically, avoiding the problem.