Of course the correct answer is that not linking against indirect dependencies is non-portable. Certainly Microsoft Windows DLLs require full linkage, and I believe/suspect that AIX does as well.
I don't see it that way. If a backend optimization can be done for a specific platform, why not? If we lose nothing, I don't see why libtool should not do it. The solution is still portable, as far as libtool is concerned. Such a change wouldn't change any of the cross-platform functionality libtool provides.
It is not an easy task to intuit which systems require the full linkage list and which will work properly with an abbreviated list. Even older Linux versions require the full linkage list (or several copies thereof!).
A further problem is that libtool doesn't reliably know if a static or shared library will be used by the system linker. If it guesses wrong and a static library is used, then everything breaks since static libraries don't support dependencies.
Bob ====================================== Bob Friesenhahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen
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