Richard/others, > > I am willing to add this to lintian if the check makes sense (I am not a > > libtool expert or even user) as long as someone tells me how to make the > > check work sensibly. > I don't think it makes sense. .la files should not go into shared library > packages, because their filenames are not versioned. And putting them in > a development package is useless for Debian systems, because our linker > doesn't need to be worked around. In fact, .la files are often a source > of bugs: I have seen many that contain paths for the maintainer's home > directory. There are two reasons why .la files could be used on Debian systems still: - libltdl's lt_dlopen() function can open .la files and use the filename found in there. This isn't necessary on Debian systems, since all architectures currently supported use .so as the extension for shared libraries, but this might change in the future (Debian GNU/Win32, anyone?). - libtool's own versioning system uses these files to find out whether the library being linked to is ABI compatible to the program. Number 2 is why I think we should keep them around. Some user may elect to compile software himself, and removing the .la file would break his build. lintian should check that - the path in the .la file is the same as the one the .la file will be installed in when the .deb is unpacked. - the .la file is in the -dev package unless it is outside of the library path, in which case the referenced .so file has to be in the same package (binary plugin). Simon
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