Ossama Othman wrote: > The latest GNU libtools (>= 1.3a) can take advantage of installed > libtool archive files (`*.la'). According to Thomas Tanner (one of the > GNU libtool mainters): > > Version >= 1.3a of libtool will search for those > files, which contain a lot of useful information > about a library (e.g. dependency libraries for > static linking). Also, they're essential for programs > using libltdl.
Can you get more details? I'm concerned that though .la files may be useful on some architectures libtool supports, they may be quite useless in debian. Reading some .la files, they seem to contain only things like libraries the library depends on and versioning info. Is there really any info in those files that cannot be obtained in other ways on linux? On linux, ldd of a .so file can automatically find out dependancy info. I don't know how to find out versioning info by examining a .so. (if someone knows, please tell me; debhelper could use a clean way to get sonames!) This could be an advantage to providing .la files, but then again maybe it's do-able without them. I'd like some concrete advantages be be found before we make this policy. -- see shy jo
