On Sunday 19 June 2005 18:42, Matthias Andree wrote: > > .so's are only included in -devel packages because their only use is when > > linking. > > False.
True. Let me explain why. > The linker, when linking a shared object, just writes a line > "bind library libfoo.so.4.2 at run time" into the program, and this > exact library (for ELF, use readelf or objdump to look for "SONAME" and > "NEEDED" attributes) is then linked when the program is run. That is true. > The .so file without .4.2 suffix (the exact numbers are an arbitrary > example here) is indeed only needed at link time, but the variant that > matches the SONAME of the library that was linked against is also needed > at runtime. That is also true. > Emulating the library search characteristics of the particular system's > linker is a different task though, and doing this incompletely can > indeed cause trouble finding runtime libraries. That's also true. > So you may have: > > libfoo-1.2.3-4.rpm containing: > lib/libfoo.so.4.2 > man/man7/foo.7.gz > share/doc/foo/README > > libfoo-devel-1.2.3-4.rpm containing: > lib/libfoo.a (static lib) > lib/libfoo.so (convenience link to libfoo.so.4.2) > man/man3/foo.3.gz > include/foo.h That's also true. You haven't explained why my statement ".so's are only included in -devel packages because their only use is when linking" is false. I have agreed with everything you have written, and I seem to be missing that critical part. You have even provided an example where libfoo.so is in the -devel rpm, just as I said.
