On Tue, Apr 05, 2011 at 08:41:37AM +0100, Neil Williams wrote: > > > > 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. > I'm trying to avoid those build failures, hence not asking for > changes in packages which still have dependencies which will look for > the dependency_libs data at build-time. Those packages only get bugs > filed when those dependencies have been fixed to either clear > dependency_libs or remove the .la file. You're not avoiding the build failures. The build failures are *caused by the non-empty dependency_libs field*. This is why the first step should be to try to empty out all the dependency_libs fields, because this can be done archive-wide without breaking anything. > > 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. > > Exactly. I'm still not sure if it's worth retaining the .a if the .la > is removed. I think for "high-end" libraries like GUIs or any library > which depends on a long list of other libraries, the likelihood of > anyone needing a static linkage of the entire stack is infinitesimal. I > am thinking that libts-dev should retain the .a but I'm open to > comments to the contrary. Currently, I'm thinking of simply removing > the .la file from libts-dev. Static linking didn't begin with libtool and doesn't end with it. pkg-config is sufficient to handle the static linking use case for packages, if those libraries support pkg-config. -- 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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