static libs ... again

Ralf Corsepius rc040203 at freenet.de
Mon Feb 20 13:24:06 UTC 2006


On Mon, 2006-02-20 at 07:10 -0600, Rex Dieter wrote:
> Hans de Goede wrote:
> > Rex Dieter wrote:
> 
> >> Ralf, excellent point, and I'm swayed by the argument.  If packagers 
> >> really want to include static libs, make it obvious and place them in 
> >> a -static subpkg.
> >>
> >> One question to beg here... I maintain several libraries that come 
> >> *only* as static libs(*).  At the moment, these pkgs provide *only* a 
> >> -devel pkg (pending upstream fix(es) to allow for shared/dynamic 
> >> libs).  Is that acceptable or should these get split too?
> 
> > Not split, but renamed would be a good so replace -devel with -static.
ACK, plus letting -static provide -devel.

For packages having both static and shared libraries I'd, put
everything but the static libs into *-devel and let *-static "Requires:
*-devel".

[BTW: we had discussed this in great dep several months ago on one of
this too many fedora lists.]

> Eek.    I still think headers and api docs and such still should be in 
> -devel (especially if there's any likelyhood of a real shared lib 
> existing some day), and that -static should Requires: %{name}-devel
Hmm, headers without libs in most cases are useless, but shipping docs
in *-devel, even for -static only packages is worth a thought. I am not
sure.

> > Also I wonder how hard is it to add -fpic -DPIC to the cflags and change 
> > the link command to generate an .so. The only added trouble would be 
> > checking for abi changes on new releases and bumping the .so name a 
> > release.
I had done so for one package, I am maintaining in FE, but ... meanwhile
regret having done so - Upstream maintainers not being able to handle
shared libs don't deserve to be played nice ;-)

> Exactly.  I'm of the opinion (in most cases) that if upstream isn't 
> able/willing to do something (like generating shared libs), then neither 
> am I (as packager).
Right, in cases upstream ships half-hearted shared libs with broken
shared libs or SONAME (Many of using 0.0.0 actually are broken), I
meanwhile would vote of  not shipping the shared libs or even dropping
the package. ;)

Ralf





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