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

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Tue, 2006-10-03 at 22:16 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> 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.

> If you know of a feature that *.la's provide on Fedora that otherwise is
> not present,

* library dependencies.
* rpath (consider parallel installed package, e.g. openmotif in parallel to lesscrap)
* redundancy - Remember: Conflicts between *.la's, *.pc's, ld.so.conf
and rpm deps not always are libtool's fault. Esp. *.pc's are MANUALLY
written.
* Inconsistent flags: Remember *.pc's are manually written. Some people
tend to abuse CFlags in *.pcs.

Ralf