New FreeBSD package system (a.k.a. Daemon Package System (dps))

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des at des.no> (from Fri, 11 May 2007  
10:33:29 +0200):

> The existence of .la files is a bug.

I fully agree.

> We already have a mechanism for recording dependencies between
> libraries; it's built into the ELF format, and does not require
> hardcoding any directories.  Introducing .la files which override the
> existing mechanism and *do* hardcode directories is a regression.
>
> I don't buy the argument that "KDE won't build without them", or
> whatever it was you used to justify this.  There is nothing an .la file
> does which can't be done more properly by adding the correct directory
> to your ldconfig path.

Unfortunately you are addressing this to the wrong people. You need to  
talk with the libtool people. Trying to use a libtool version which is  
as closest as possible to the version distributed by the authors is a  
very sane requirement for our ports collection and the users which  
expect a sane behavior of libtool when they want to create a tarball  
which is supposed to be cross-platform (for an appropriate value of  
cross-platform).

So you need to address the issues upstream. As soon as a new release  
comes out with the improvements you suggest, we will get them in  
FreeBSD. The problem is that a lot of users of libltdl try to open the  
.la file instead of the lib (AFAIR libltdl tries to first open the .la  
then the .so if you don't have a .la or .so ending in the dlopen()  
string, but most people specify the .la... I could misremember this,  
it's been a while since I looked at it).

The way to go is to teach libtool about the ELF features and to not  
produce the .la files on ELF systems. Additionally a warning in  
libltdl needs to printed in case the .la file is used (as a second  
step maybe adding a long delay to the loading in case a .la file is  
used, to provoke the transition).

While it may be more easy to talk about doing something like this in  
our ports collection, the way to go is to address this upstream with  
the libtool authors, and not with portmgr/ade or on hackers/ports.

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
Law of the Yukon:
	Only the lead dog gets a change of scenery.

http://www.Leidinger.net    Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7
http://www.FreeBSD.org       netchild @ FreeBSD.org  : PGP ID = 72077137