xfce 4.2.1 packages available

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 06:45:38 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

> On Mon, 2005-03-21 at 03:48 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 15:56:04 -1000, Warren Togami wrote:
> > 
> > > We are almost ready to push XFCE 4.2.1.1.  Only remaining question is if 
> > > we want to totally remove the .la and/or .a files from the binary 
> > > packages.  Do we?
> > 
> > > http://people.redhat.com/wtogami/temp/xfce-FC3/
> > 
> > Certainly for directories which contain .so plugins, e.g. in the xfprint
> > package. I have strong doubts that static archives are needed in there.
> > 
> > Whether the libtool archives are needed in such directories depends on how
> > the .so files are loaded at run-time. Is it dlopen()? Then .la files are
> > not needed.
> I disagree. 
> 
> If a package installs *.la's, then these are part of a package's API.
> You are not legitimated to remove them, because this would break the API
> a package provides.
> 
> It doesn't matter if these *.so/*.la's are being used by the package
> they are shipped with, because you can't know what other applications
> might do with them.

It does matter. If .la files for private plugins are just a byproduct of
using libtool, there are useless and only increase the file count. Plugin
DSOs cannot be used by external programs unless there is an API actually.

If you went on with your rationale, you would also judge that the .a
files are needed because they belong to the package's API, regardless
of whether they are located in private plugin directories.

> This applies to shared libraries as well as to plugins - They are
> supposed to be "shared" between applications.

Our Linux's run-time and build-time linkers don't need the libtool
archives. Often the added inter-library dependency information in these
files require unneeded explicit package dependencies, too.