On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 15:02 -0500, Peter O'Gorman wrote:
remember which systems needed .la files, but it mostly old SysV-derived commercial unix systems IIRC. Nobody should be using them (or, frankly, (g)libtool, although it does provide a useful veneer over the shared library building process that really should have been replaced by another tool IMHO. Certainly, there are many people using scons now
You had me mostly agreeing with you until you mentioned scons. Scons is one of the worst tools I have ever come across from the point of view of the user attempting to build software.
My point was merely that its possible to do portable, cross-platform shared library building without creating extra files like the .la's that libtool spews out, and without hiding things in .libs until they are installed. Which clearly makes my post even more off-topic than usual, since the Xquartz project is about as cross-platform as ... well, it simply isn't :) --p