(followup from -release, text from there is reused, so if you read -release things are not too new for you)
Hi, from time to time we have "funny" RC bugs thanks to dependencies hidden in .la-files. Also these files lead to unneeded dependencies between packages (in the case package A needs lib B which needs lib C, in the normal case A would link B, B would link C; with libtools *.la-files however A would also directly link C, meaning A need binNMUs in case C changes soname, but the A binnmu can only happen after B is binnmued successfully). I would like to get rid of these unnecessary dependencies, and reduce the number of potential RC bugs. One week ago we had (ignoring any files in /usr/lib/kde3, as they are unfortunatly necessary, and always counting source packages even though of course looked into binary packages on sid/i386) 1098 packages that contain *.la-files, where 856 have dependency_libs not empty, and 421 packages are referenced by other *.la-files, i.e. 672 packages only contain leaf *.la-files (i.e. not referenced by any dependency_libs). It might happen that we come to the conclusion that we need to keep a few la-files around, as they might be a help for static compiling, but static compiling is at best "not the default", so I would be quite surprised if that's more than 5-10 files (and then that's the exception that confirms the rule). The idea is to ask all maintainers of the 672 packages to drop their *.la-file unless really needed, and any maintainer of any package to empty the dependency_libs. "Asking" starts with a mail to d-d-a and individual bug reports (not all bug reports at the same time obviously). After the first packages have their *.la-file dropped / dependency_libs removed, more packages can drop their *.la-file, and we should end up only with the cases where we really need the file. (If you maintain a package with an *.la-file, please do not just drop the la-file. Empty the dependency_libs is good, dropping the is only ok if no other package depends on it.) If this discussion ends with "do it" I will file an wishlist bug for a new lintian check (first only to check if dependency_libs is empty), send a mail to d-d-a with "how to do it" and a list of affected packages, and then step-by-step file the appropriate bug reports (only for packages which can dump their la-file). About "how to do it", for debhelper the cleanup is part of the dh_devlibs-script proposed as bug #534966, for cdbs there seems to be a gnome-rule as /usr/share/gnome-pkg-tools/1/rules/clean-la.mk but in any case it should be easy to do an sed "s,^dependency_libs=.*,dependency_libs=''," $la-file as part of debian/rules but before building the deb-files. Comments / Suggestions are welcome. Cheers, Andi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
