Package: debian-policy Version: 2.5.1.0
Seconders: Marcus Brinkmann, Marcelo E. Magallon Description (from Joey Hess): .la files aren't useless, libtool can use them and they are essential to programs that use libltdl. Proposal is to include .la files in -dev packages if they are produced by the build process. Details: According to Thomas Tanner (one of the GNU libtool maintainers): 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. Statements from Gary Vaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, one of the libtool maintainers: An ever increasing number of packages are using libtool to do their linking, and I would estimate that about 20-40% of GNU packages already do so. The main advantage of libtool's .la files is that it allows libtool to store and subsequently access metadata with respect to the libraries it builds. ... Certainly libtool is fully capable of linking against shared libraries which don't have .la files, but being a mere shell script it can add considerably to the build time of a libtool using package if that shellscript has to derive all this infomation from first principles for each library every time it is linked. With the advent of libtool-1.4 (and to a lesser extent libtool-1.3), the .la files will also store information about inter-library dependencies which cannot necessarily be derived after the .la file is deleted. Thomas can probably explain this a lot better than I can, so I won't muddy the waters with a poor example of my own. ----------------------- -Ossama -- Ossama Othman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Center for Distributed Object Computing, Washington University, St. Louis 58 60 1A E8 7A 66 F4 44 74 9F 3C D4 EF BF 35 88 1024/8A04D15D 1998/08/26
