Autotoolers, For quite some time now I've been thinking about simplifying Libtool, but I'm interested in feedback and more particularly buy-in from Automake maintainers before I start the work, so that I have a better idea of what direction I'm heading in...
Libtool is just (a complicated) compiler wrapper, to make building and linking against libraries easy to specify... be that on the command line with a direct libtool invocation, or from Makefile.am specifications. I'm considering splitting the current libtool project in two: 1. libltdl as a standalone runtime loader wrapper 2. libtool.m4/ltmain.sh to generate the libtool script I think (2) belongs better into Automake alongside the other tool wrappers it already carries, where it can decide whether to run the libtool m4 macros and roll an appropriate compiler wrapper tailored for the project using it (no need for all the C++/Java/Fortran goo in a C- only project for example). Another consideration is that rolling Libtool into Automake would make using Libtool as a standalone script rather more difficult. Having said that, my impression is that Libtool is rarely used that way in any case, and further simplification may be possible by deliberately dropping explicit support for that use case. If I make this split and contribute the macros and ltmain.sh to Automake, is this something anyone else would like? If so, do you like it enough to wire it into Automake with an appropriate hunk of Perl? If the consensus is that Automake is not a good home for the libtool compiler wrapper, then I still plan to split Libtool into two projects as outlined above to decouple and simplify somewhat -- although I have some other things to attend to first, so it will not happen right away, but more likely after the next release. Thoughts? Cheers, -- Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)
