[Fedora-packaging] Re: libtool(.la) archive policy proposal

Enrico Scholz enrico.scholz at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de
Mon Oct 2 12:11:58 UTC 2006


Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net (Axel Thimm) writes:

> | Here's a crazy-but-not-too-far-from-reality example: Build shared-lib
> | pkg 'b' which links against 'a'. b's .la files now include references
> | to 'liba.la' (so now depends on it). Build shared-lib pkg 'c' which
> | links against 'b', whose own libc.la file includes
> | references(+dependancy) on libb.la. Rinse, lather, repeat. You'll end
> | up with a pkg z, and a libz.la, which, when all is said and done,
> | 
> |     * will have a direct dependancy upon y's liby.la
> |     * and because of liby.la file references/dependances, will have
> |     (indirect) dependancies upon liba.la, libb.la, ..., libx.la
> | 
> | When, generally, *none* of these are really required nor desired.
>
> I'm not sure about that, but maybe I understand something wrongly:
>
> - If -la was needed for building libb, then there exists a real
>   dependency between liba and libb and libb.la is correct about that.

No, this dependency does not need to be handled explicitly with dynamic
libraries.

E.g. a dep-tree of

  liba.so -> libb.so -> libc.so  ->  app

would suffice. Having the '-la' in libb.la and '-lb' in libc.la would
cause a tree like

         ---------------------------
        /         ,----------------  \
       /         /                 `v v
  liba.so -> libb.so -> libc.so  ->  app
        \                 ^
         `----------------' 


Unfortunately, widely used tools like 'libtool' or 'cmake' are creating
such trees (at least when the libs and apps are in the same project). For
'cmake' there is a workaround to put '-Wl,--as-needed' into the linker
flags but for 'libtool' you have to patch ltmain.



A good check to verify cleaness of libraries/binaries is

| ldd -u -r <lib>

This should neither output undefined symbols nor unused direct dependencies.



> From a different view: *.la files aren't much different than *.pc
> files, in fact they contain a subset of their information.

ACK. Often, 'pkgconfig' is used wrongly and contains superflous Requires:
resulting into a tree like above.

'pkgconfig' might make sense in providing certain C(PP)FLAGS; but .la
files are completely superflous (at least for for dynamic linking).



Enrico
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