On Sun, Mar 21, 2004 at 08:18:35PM +0000, Roger Leigh wrote: > Stephen Frost <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > We shouldn't be recommending providing staticlly linked libs for people > > to use, even in the 'fast moving' case- if it's that fast then it > > probably shouldn't be in Debian and that's just life. > > .la files shouldn't be included in anything, they're just plain broken. > Even with static libraries? The .la does contain dependency > information. I know that using pkg-config .pc files can eliminate > this case, but not everything using libtool is using pkg-config yet. pkg-config is a *far* worse offender than libtool. With libtool, we have some hope of getting these things right in the near future; pkg-config, OTOH, doesn't even know there *is* a difference between static and shared libs, so can't be taught to handle them differently without a lot of growing pains. Please don't add pkg-config to packages that don't already have the misfortune of using it! In general, while policy does require us to ship static libraries, it does not require shipping .la files to go with them. If there's a choice to be made between having a brittle shared library dependency tree in Debian and having static library users complaining that they have to link by hand, I know which way I'm gonna vote. However, with the pending libtool cleanups (our libtool maintainer is actively involved with addressing precisely these issues upstream), it should soon no longer be necessary to make such a choice. But shipping .la files in non-dev packages should still be a hanging offense. Cheers, -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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