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

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Wed, 2006-10-04 at 06:25 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> Also consider: Any package using libtool by default installs *.la's, any
> package's author (Note: author, not Fedora package maintainer) has the
> liberty of removing them upon installation as part of his package's
> "installation step", if he thinks they are harmful/not useful.

You're wrong.  *.la's provides benefit to upstream.  It does not always
provide benefits to downstream.  Therefore it is downstream which must
make the decision whether to remove the .la files.

*.la's guarantee that upstream will get a certain set of features when
people try to link against their library and provide a means of portably
implementing loadable modules with libltdl.  In Fedora these are
provided without the *.la files present (as long as the application
doesn't explicitly ask for the *.la's which, if the purpose is
portability, they shouldn't.)  *.la's might make some sense when linking
statically, but if our general Fedora Policy is to remove static
libraries then our general *.la policy should be removal as well.

If you know of a feature that *.la's provide on Fedora that otherwise is
not present, feel free to share it so we can refine the Guidelines to do
the right thing.

-Toshio
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