[Xquartz-dev] OT - libtool suckage (was: Re: Notes on OSX 10.5.5)

Peter O'Gorman peter at pogma.com
Tue Sep 16 13:02:50 PDT 2008


Paul Davis wrote:
> 
> My apologies if this is redundant info, but .la files are utterly
> useless on any "modern" *nix system. They fill a hole on some systems
> where the dynamic linker cannot do what a dynamic/runtime linker should.

.la files are used by libtool to create input to the static linker, but
are only really useful for creating static libraries/executables.
Libtool adds extra, unneeded libraries to the link line when creating
dynamic libraries/executables, in many cases causing problems (and
forcing the use of, e.g. GNU ld's --as-needed flag). They (.la files)
are also used by libltdl when loading libraries with lt_dlopen, but the
only system I have come across where the information is useful to
libltdl is Tru64 4.0D. Other dynamic linkers load dependent libraries in
the correct order, from the correct rpath, as expected.

> The OS X, Unix and even the Windows ones are adequately capable, and .la
> files serve absolutely no purpose on these platforms. They are also an
> impediment to debugging and other issues. To be honest, I can't even

Many systems do not install .la files, it was, I think, agreed earlier,
that Mac OS X 10.6 would be one of them (at least for the X11 bits).

> 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 library building process that really should have been replaced by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.

> which has the same level of portability for major OS platforms and
> without any .la nonsense).

Although some of the Mac OS X bits are built with xcodebuild, the vast
majority of the Xorg code is built with the autotools, that is not
likely to change this year.

Peter
-- 
Peter O'Gorman
http://pogma.com


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