NOT installing the .la files

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Mikhail Teterin <mi+kde at aldan.algebra.com> (from Sun, 11 Jun  
2006 21:51:36 -0400):

> On Sunday 11 June 2006 21:21, Mark Linimon wrote:
> = Unavoidable, for KDE; and thus, not worth spending all the time modifying
> = ports to either install them or not.  This makes maintainance a lot easier.
>
> Well, they are all installed by the same ${LOCALBASE}/bin/libtool
>
> 	/bin/sh /opt/bin/libtool  --mode=install /usr/bin/install -c \
> 		libmimetic.la /opt/lib/libmimetic.la
>
> The script is installed by its port, which could patch it to ignore the .la
> files altogether -- keeping the maintaince of the rest of the ports just as
> simple and the filesystem slightly cleaner
>
> There are 321 .la files on my system, for example. Do I need this junk?

If you use KDE: yes (maybe not all, but some of them).

I don't know why, but my first guess is they load <lib>.la instead of  
<lib>.so in case they use dlopen() or the corresponding function of  
libltdl.

Strictly speaking the .la files are not needed on a lot of common  
platforms. But on some system they may be needed. At the time we did  
not install the .la files, I whould support you in the removal of  
those files, but since the current policy is to use the vendor  
supplied functionality I suggest to not remove the .la files.

You could try to convince the vendor that they are not needed on  
current platforms. A litte bit of backward compatibility has to be  
added then, e.g. if libltdl gets asked to load a .la it should look  
for .so instead on those platforms.

Bye,
Alexander.

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