Re: PROPOSAL: libtool archive (`*.la) files in `-dev' packages
Ossama Othman wrote:
> Certainly libtool is fully capable of linking against shared libraries which
> don't have .la files, but being a mere shell script it can add considerably
> to the build time of a libtool using package if that shellscript has to derive
> all this infomation from first principles for each library every time it is
> linked.
Hm. If all the gain we get is the possible advantage in speed of
reading/sourcing a .la file versus running objdump -p, I'll have to oppose
this proposal to ship .la files with debian. That's got to be on the order
of only a second or so per build saved.
> With the advent of libtool-1.4 (and to a lesser extent libtool-1.3), the .la
> files will also store information about inter-library dependencies which
> cannot necessarily be derived after the .la file is deleted. Thomas can
> probably explain this a lot better than I can, so I won't muddy the waters
> with a poor example of my own.
As far as I can see linux's shared library format allows specification of
inter-library dependancies. So I hope an example is forthcoming..
> objdump will get soname information from an elf library, and version numbers
> are encoded in the filenames. Of course, this doesn't help much if the
> version numbering system is not known, or is inconsistent (say with mixed
> libtool and non-libtool versioned libs where the .la files have been removed).
This looks like a real benefit.
--
see shy jo
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