[Fedora-packaging] Package Guildelines / Review Guidelines: .la archives must/should not contradiction

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On 09/16/2009 04:16 PM, Till Maas wrote:
> Hiyas,
> 
> I just noticed that the packaging guidelines say the .la archives should
> not be included but the review guidelienes say that they must not
> included:
> 
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#StaticLibraries
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:ReviewGuidelines
> 
> I stumbled up this because the Merge Review of apr cannot be finished
> with clarification of this:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=225253
> 

I believe it should be a MUST with exceptions.  Review Guidelines are
more succinct and therefore less prone to a slip up when being written
up.  Even then, there have been times when a Review Guideline uses the
uppercase, bold '''MUST''' to show that it's a MUST but then used should
in the sentence describing what needs to be done.

The only current exception is:
"""
Note that if you are updating a library in a stable release (not devel)
and the package already contains *.la files, removing the *.la files
should be treated as an API/ABI change
"""

That means that *.la should only be removed in devel or on new package
review.

The apr case could be a second exception (based on the idea that the
apr-1-config --link-libtool should work on fedora).  However, looking at
the source code to /usr/bin/apr-1-config, I don't think that the removal
of the *.la causes apr-1-config to fail::

    --link-libtool)
    # If the LA_FILE exists where we think it should be, use it.  If we're
    # installed and the LA_FILE does not exist, assume to use -L/-l
    # (the LA_FILE may not have been installed).  If we're building
ourselves,
    # we'll assume that at some point the .la file be created.
    if test -f "$LA_FILE"; then
        flags="$flags $LA_FILE"
    elif test "$location" = "installed"; then
        ### avoid using -L if libdir is a "standard" location like /usr/lib
        # Since the user is specifying they are linking with libtool, we
        # *know* that -R will be recognized by libtool.
        flags="$flags -L$libdir -R$libdir -l${APR_LIBNAME}"
    else
        flags="$flags $LA_FILE"
    fi
    ;;

Is there a test case where removing the *.la causes a program to stop
that uses apr-1-config --link-libtool to stop building?  If not, then
this is definitely not a valid basis for an exception.

-Toshio

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