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Re: SUMMARY: Re: shared library -dev package naming proposal



On Thu, Jul 28, 2005 at 08:38:17AM -0500, Steve Greenland wrote:

> Why is this better? I have to change my perfectly normal, standard Unix
> link command to use something that completely hides the actual link
> command and makes debugging problems nearly impossible?

Exercise: let's say I have an application that uses GSSAPI, and has to
be able to be built statically. Requirements:

- It should build with Heimdal's libgssapi
- It should build with MIT's libgssapi
- It should build with Globus GSI

All these cases require a completely different set of dependant static
libraries even though I'm only using the GSSAPI interface.

With libtool, it's trivial, since all the information you need is
already expressed in the .la files. Care to explain a method that is

- better than libtool
- works already (the most important requirement being that Globus must
  support it out-of-the-box)
- not Debian-specific (only a minor set of the target machines runs
  Debian)?

> I really don't get it. And, for the record, the company I work for
> ships code for a variety of Unices. I spend a *lot* more of my time
> debugging libtool brokenness (not to mention auto* brokeness) than I
> do tracking down which libraries need which other libraries. So when I
> say "I don't get it", it's not lack of experience with the tools, I'm
> just completely mystified why people think that libtool is an
> *improvement*.

Well, I have used libtool on a couple of architectures and my opinion is
that using libtool is still way more effective than re-inventing it over
and over again. Yes, it has bugs (for example the AIX support is
notoriously buggy), but they can be fixed just like any other software.

Gabor

-- 
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     MTA SZTAKI Computer and Automation Research Institute
                Hungarian Academy of Sciences
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