On Mon, Apr 04, 2011 at 07:33:24PM +0100, Neil Williams wrote: > > >> Lintian already checks that *.la files don't contain the problematic > > >> dependency_libs setting. > > This apparently just isn't true. I could have sworn that we had a check, > > but we apparently do not. We definitely should. That's probably why > > there are so many problems; I suspect a lot of them would go away if there > > were a Lintian check. > As outlined previously, this does need to be done in a fairly strict > sequence which is external to the package. It might be hard for lintian > to make this into an error for all packages. > Many packages (all those in the list with depended-on) must not touch > their .la files at this stage - including the dependency_libs listing. That's not correct. It is safe for any package to clear out the dependency_libs field of any .la file, as far as the OS is concerned. It is a (rather intractable) upstream bug in libtool that it recurses these .la files at all at build time when doing dynamic linking on Linux, and the only difference between a populated and an empty dependency_libs field for a package build is whether or not you get a build failure because a referenced .la file is missing. Now, removing this information will impact *static* linking using libtool; but that's already largely broken due to the preceding dependency_libs removals in the archive, and the number of packages doing static linking in Debian can be counted on one hand - none of them using libtool AFAIK. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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