static libraries' policy

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On 10/11/05, Dmitry Butskoy <buc at odusz.so-cdu.ru> wrote:
> IMHO, it would be better to package and distribute them, but the same
> way as debuginfo. I.e., no "-static" packages in any standard
> distribution (on CD and on most mirrors), and no need to package it
> explicitly. As packager just leave debug info in the executables (and
> later they will be stripped, but stripped data go to "-debuginfo"), as
> static libs can be left and excluded into separate special subpackage
> automagically.

You can't operate automagically here, since sometimes static libs are,
for some reason or another, required for program execution during
run-time. E.g. KDE programs, when loading plugins, will always look
for .la files, and ignore .so files, unless specifically instructed to
load the .so extension (and last time I tried this, it didn't work).
You can only safely discard the static libs that are not required for
program operation, and it's impossible to make such decisions
automatically.

Regards,
--
Konstantin Ryabitsev
Montreal, Quebec