Re: DSO linking changes for wheezy
On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 7:24 PM, Roger Leigh <rleigh@codelibre.net> wrote:
> What's the actual problem --as-needed is trying to solve?
>
> The answer is mainly unwanted libraries being linked in as a result
> of using pkg-config (and various other -config variants), though there
> are other, lesser, culprits. The pkg-config .pc files for gtk, gnome
> and other libraries add in many libraries, most of which aren't
> typically needed.
>
> The solution: fix the .pc files!
>
> Using --as-needed is merely papering over the actual root problem.
> It "fixes" the symptoms, but it's not addressing the actual cause.
> The number of packages providing broken .pc files is not large, and
> the number breaking due to relying on this brokenness is likely
> just as small.
I can't see why you think --as-needed is fundamentally wrong or unnecessary.
Check out http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/qa/asneeded.xml
--as-needed has saved tons of time for upgrades like Cairo in Gentoo,
where Cairo had been linked to glitz which is now useless and gone. So
when people upgraded Cairo, all the software that linked against it
(and also unnecessarily linked against glitz) broke because glitz was
missing. Maybe this isn't important for binary distributions. I don't
know.
I mean, I don't particularly care what Debian does. I just find the
fervor with which you fight against --as-needed strange.
Matt
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