to > run it or not. That doesn't help the folks who aren't using debhelper = as > much, though. But isn't the decision of the maintainer to use dh_striplibs orthogonal to the need for a library not to be stripped? That is, some set of libraries presumably shouldn't be stripped out of NEEDED entries (because they provide constructors/destructors), but that is not likely to correspond to the set of maintainers who decide to strip apparently-superfluous NEEDED entries from their own program or library. I think what's needed is two-fold. First, a library packager should be able to say "I'm sure my library doesn't use constructors/destructors or anything else that would make checklib give a false negative for it". Second, any maintainer should be able to take advantage of that fact and make that library's NEEDED entry be stripped from his/her own package if (a) it appears unneeded and (b) the library packager has "promised" it would be OK. The first item could be implemented with a new debhelper tool, for the sake of argument call it "dh_setstrippable". This would just register the fact in some file of the library package, say /var/lib/dpkg/info/libfoo.strippable, similar to the shlibs file. This could just contain a list of sonames that the library maintainer knows actually could be stripped away if checklib thinks they appear unneeded. For instance, the file /var/lib/dpkg/info/libgtk2.0-0.strippable might have these contents: libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 libgdk_pixbuf_xlib-2.0.so.0 libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 caused by the GTK maintainer putting this command in debian/rules: dh_setstrippable -plibgtk2.0-0 libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 \ libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 [...] The second item could be a new feature of dh_strip; it would check for apparently unneeded NEEDED entries [*] using the same logic as checklib, and, for each soname that is registered in a "strippable" file, it would nuke the NEEDED entry. (Whether this is possible, or how this is done, I unfortunately have no idea.) One could of course imagine dh_strip having a new flag that would turn this behavior off if for some reason the maintainer found it unwanted. [*] unneeded NEEDED entries: there's a great oxymoron! Since dh_strip is run in the build of just about every package containing a binary or library, the only effort required for this to work would be the opt-in on the part of library maintainers (who, one hopes, tend to be among the most active and knowledgeable maintainers). As more library maintainers determined it was safe to opt in [**], and new versions of packages were recompiled and uploaded, the problem of unnecessary library dependencies would slowly be reduced. No annoying relibtoolization, no potentially dangerous use of ld's --as-needed flag, and no editing of pkg-config or .la files required! [**] I hope someone out there knows how a library maintainer can reliably determine this! best regards, --=20 Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu> Physics Department WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/ Princeton University GPG: public key ID 4F83C751 Princeton, NJ 08544
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