Re: Packaging policy for libtool .la files

[Kevin Kofler <kevin kofler chello at>]

Michal Hlavinka wrote:
> Are you sure it's not only for static libraries?

Yes, I am:
| Libtool archives, foo.la files, should not be included. Packages using
| libtool will install these by default even if you configure
| with --disable-static, so they may need to be removed before packaging.

--disable-static means the package is built only shared, but the guidelines
talk about removing .la files even there. In fact the whole point is that
on GNU/Linux, .la files are only ever needed for static linking (and even
there not always).

> If I understand you correctly then there should be no .la files at all?

Ideally yes, but there's this exception:
| Due to bugs in older versions of libtool or bugs in programs that use it,
| there are times when it is not always possible to remove *.la files
| without modifying the program. In most cases it is fairly easy to work
| with upstream to fix these issues.
e.g. KDE 3 plugins (not libraries) need .la files (this is fixed in KDE 4,
which got rid of libtool and libltdl entirely).

        Kevin Kofler