On Mon, 2004-05-17 at 23:31, Alexandre Duret-Lutz wrote: > >>> "Ralf" == Ralf Corsepius <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Ralf> On Mon, 2004-05-03 at 06:52, Bob Proulx wrote: > >> Older versions of automake allowed arbitrary library names. > >> > >> noinst_LIBRARIES = foo.a > >> > >> Recent versions of automake now complain about this naming. > Ralf> Recent? Well, AFAICT this (mal-) feature is in automake for years. > Ralf> I wish it had never been introduced :( > > I've dug some interesting bit of history out of the CVS > repository.
> >From this I gather that some people actually care that the > libraries get properly named. I guess it makes sense to enforce > such name for installed libraries (so they can be used with -l), Yes, but this is arguable. Most people will want to libxxx.a for comply with -l, but in general, nothing but conventions prevents you from using static libs named by arbitrary names. For noinst_LIBRARIES, another consideration applies: They do not get installed and therefore often will not be accessed using $CC -l, but be used in other ways. One case, I had encountered this issue, is creating noinst_LIBRARIES as temporary archives being extracted elsewhere in a build-tree to be merged into another library. Here, enforcing lib* is unnecessary and can become annoying when converting a package to automake. > and perhaps it would also be sensible to relax the naming for > noinst_ libraries. > > I'm quite surprised by this thread, though. First I don't know > how Bob could have possibly used arbitrary library names (a > patched Automake, maybe?) Then I confess I don't really realize > to what extent this restriction is annoying. I can see that > Ralf is annoyed, but I do not know why. Calling it "annoyed" is too strong. However, in the past, I had been bitten by automake insisting on naming LIBRARIES lib* myself and had found myself hacking Makefiles for backward compatibility. Nowadays this isn't an actual problem anymore (people probably are accustomed to using lib*.a and take it for granted), except for one issue, I consider to be "just an unclearity": What kind of files is <dir>_LIBRARIES to take? Is it static libraries? In this case enforcing lib* complies to common "*nix" conventions, to accommodate the compilers' "-l" flags. But how about other, non-*nixish systems? Does automake convert libxxx.a's into something else for these systems? Is it an arbitrary "ar"-created archive? In this case the name "_LIBRARIES" is be misleading and automake's behavior would not be correct. > AFAIC naming a > convenience library libfoo.a instead of foo.a is not a big deal. > Finally, I'm surprised this discussion hasn't come up before (or > did it?). I vaguely recall this not to be the first time and I am aware about similar issues lurking for other automake primaries ;) Ralf
