Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
Doesn't this patch cause Linux to be more equal than other operating systems, thereby causing free applications to be developed which won't work anywhere else?
No, it just shortens the link line on platforms that support that.
The point of my statement is that many applications are developed solely under Linux, but the authors expect them to be portable because they use autotools and standard APIs. It seems that the shortened link line will allow developers to not list the dependencies which are necessary on some other platforms. The result of this is more applications which don't compile and link outside of Linux. There are an abundance of new Linux programmers for which Linux is the new "Windows" (single operating system mentality) and have not bought into the open systems concept. Given that these programmers don't have experience with any other Unix system, and are unlikely to test on other systems, it is useful if libtool helps aid/enforce portability by any means available.
I do see that the explicit dependency list provided by libtool will cause severe problems for Linux maintainers who need to maintain the system incrementally. There is also the point that the libtool which comes with a Linux distribution has likely already been hacked to be more lenient. If FSF libtool becomes more lenient by default, then there likely little actual impact.
Bob ====================================== Bob Friesenhahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen
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