[Xquartz-dev] 2.3.0-rc6

Martin Costabel costabel at wanadoo.fr
Sun Jul 13 11:54:48 PDT 2008


Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> 
> On Jul 13, 2008, at 4:34 AM, Martin Costabel wrote:
> 
>> The argument remains valid: If you remove the *.la files, you cut off
>> any upgrade path. Now I don't know if Macports cares about  
>> upgradability
>> from Leopard to SnowLeopard, but I know that Fink does. Your move will
>> be a major headache for anyone compiling  software on their own Mac.
> 
> It's still not clear to me what utility is being provided by the .la  
> files, however - can someone perhaps speak to that a little (from an  
> external perspective)?  The question is important given that we're  
> also looking at nuking the .la files for other projects in SnowLeopard.

I would immediately agree that this system of *.la files created and 
used by gnu libtool does not provide any important functionality on 
darwin. The problem is that it is contagious, i.e. the names of existing 
*.la files are stored in other *.la files and lead to linker errors if 
they suddenly disappear. One could argue that this is a deficiency of 
gnu libtool (it could switch to *.dylib if *.la is not available, or 
something), but that's how it is.

But aren't your *.la files created by autotools build systems, thus gnu 
libtool, too? I don't see how they can become incoherent.

Anyway, there are more competent people than me on this list (Peter) to 
discuss this in more depth.

-- 
Martin




More information about the Xquartz-dev mailing list