Bug#561413: Policy possibly should not recommend *.la files
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.8.3.0
Severity: wishlist
Policy currently says:
An ever increasing number of packages are using libtool to do their
linking. The latest GNU libtools (>= 1.3a) can take advantage of the
metadata in the installed libtool archive files (*.la files). The main
advantage of libtool's .la files is that it allows libtool to store and
subsequently access metadata with respect to the libraries it builds.
libtool will search for those files, which contain a lot of useful
information about a library (such as library dependency information for
static linking). Also, they're *essential* for programs using
libltdl.
Given the various problems that we've run into with *.la files, particularly
around adding unnecessary shared library dependencies, I wonder if this
paragraph should be revised to be a bit less encouraging about retaining
*.la files. (Although I suppose that this may change if binutils-gold and
its --as-needed default becomes the default linker.)
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.30-2-686-bigmem (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
debian-policy depends on no packages.
debian-policy recommends no packages.
Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
ii doc-base 0.9.5 utilities to manage online documen
-- no debconf information
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