Status of libtool 2.2.X?

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Fri, 2008-10-10 at 15:24 -0400, Adam Jackson wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-10-10 at 12:07 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> > Adam Jackson wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2008-10-10 at 11:31 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> > >> Hand coding Makefiles to compile shared libraries on all platforms is .
> > >>  Before libtools many upstreams simply wouldn't package shared libraries
> > >> because of all the problems with getting it right for SunOS, Solaris,
> > >> OpenBSD, NetBSD, i386BSD, FreeBSD, AIX, Linux-aout, Linux-elf, gcc, acc,
> > >> etc.  If the state of the art has advanced and there's a tool that can
> > >> replace libtool so a developer can say "I want a shared library" and the
> > >> tool builds it on all platforms then we could look into getting
> > >> upstreams to switch but simply getting rid of libtool in favour of
> > >> handcoding Makefiles to build shared libraries is a step in the wrong
> > >> direction.
> > > 
> > > The state of the art is "gcc -shared".
> > > 
> > So gcc is the compiler everywhere these days?  Note this is a genuine
> > question -- I haven't used anything besides Linux in so long I don't
> > know whether Sun or anyone else is shipping their own C compiler anymore.
> 
> Sun cc is pretty similar, but solaris has gcc installed well over half
> the time anyway.  *BSD and OSX are all gcc,
Though these beasts are GCC variants, they actually are quite different
from Linux-vendor's GCCs or FSF GCC.

>  Windows is effectively gcc
> for open source projects, and there are no other operating systems.
> 
> Most of the complexity in libtool (and autotools in general) is to
> support systems that simply are not worth supporting and that
> practically speaking don't exist anymore.
Ouch! Supporting different compilers is very small detail in libtool
(and the autotools in general). They do a lot more.

Ralf