Re: ITP: Xalan-C++

[Brian May <bam@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Yves" == Yves Arrouye <yves@realnames.com> writes:

    Yves> I don't know why these guys make it so painful! I'm not
    Yves> saying that they should use libtool, but they could make

I think it is very easy to add libtool and automake support to a
package that already has configure support. That way it should work on
any platform too (except perhaps Windows of course).

    Yves> It looks like Randolph did a good job on Xerces-C:

Oh good...

    Yves> gabier% ls -l /usr/lib/libxerc* lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18
    Yves> Aug 2 11:40 /usr/lib/libxerces-c.so -> libxerces-c.so.1.1
    Yves> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Aug 2 11:40
    Yves> /usr/lib/libxerces-c.so.1.1 -> libxerces-c.so.1.1.0
    Yves> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 948512 Apr 16 2000
    Yves> /usr/lib/libxerces-c.so.1.1.0

    Yves> (but there are no static libraries).

This would be solved with libtool...

All you need for libtool/automake support, is to

1. add AM_PROG_LIBTOOL somewhere inside configure.in

2. create a Makefile.am, this could as simple as:

lib_LTLIBRARIES = libxerces.la
libxerces_la_SOURCES = a.c b.c d.c etc.c
libxerces_la_LDFLAGS = -version-info 3:12:1

(the hardest part will be maintaining this version number...)

3. some other minor changes, eg. configure might have to be changed to
build Makefile based on Makefile.am - this is very simple. Also, the
existing build system should optionally be deleted.

4. Copy libtool files with "libtoolize --c".

5. build initial version of Makefile.in with "automake
Makefile". Also update configure with "autoconf".

6. test everything out!
-- 
Brian May <bam@debian.org>