FreeBSD port of libtool

[Romain Tartière]

Dear devel/libtool maintainer (I added ports@ in CC since their might be
people with "the answer" there),

While updating FreeBSD ports I maintain, I encountered a dependency on
recent libltdl version: quoting libcanberra-0.12 (which I don't maintain
but a port I maintain depends on) configure.ac:

> dnl Unfortunately, even up to libtool 2.2.6a there is no way to know
> dnl exactly which version of libltdl is present in the system, so we
> dnl just assume that it's a working version as long as we have the
> dnl library and the header files.
> dnl
> dnl As an extra safety device, check for lt_dladvise_init() which is
> dnl only implemented in libtool 2.x, and refine as we go if we have
> dnl refined requirements.

... and configure says:

> checking ltdl.h usability... yes
> checking ltdl.h presence... yes
> checking for ltdl.h... yes
> checking for lt_dladvise_init in -lltdl... no
> configure: error: Unable to find libltdl.

So, I though I had to check the libtool version, thinking I was not
up-to-date with my port or that libcanberra was relying on an API that
had been added to libtool a few time ago.

However, I discovered that while libtool stable version is 2.2.6a,
FreeBSD had 1.5.26.

I could not find any relevant PR nor message in the mailing lists, and
am wondering about why isn't libtool up-to-date.  Is it just because of
a lack of time? Because introduced features are not used and their is no
need to update? Because it would require a big work to update all ports
depending of it? Something else?

I just would like to know how I should consider libtool on FreeBSD. If
taking time to update it is a loss of time or if it would be somewhat
useful.

In advance, thank you for your lights.

Regards,
Romain

-- 
Romain Tartière <romain at blogreen.org>        http://romain.blogreen.org/
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