xfce 4.2.1 packages available

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Mon, 2005-03-21 at 13:01 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> 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
Urgh, nasty typo: "s/doesn't matter/does matter/"

> > 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.
Wrong. Though, they are not necessary on linux in most situations, but
they are needed by _libtool_ on other systems as part of the libtool-
API.

Get yourself a Sun and you will experience that your statement is wrong.

>  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.
Right - The point is to distinguish whether these *.a are private or are
part of the API.

The purpose of plugins and shared-libs however is sharing them, so you
as a package have no possibility to know who might do what with them.

> > 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.
Whether you like it or not, these dependencies exist. libtool only makes
these dependencies explicit - However there exist broken versions of
libtool and mal-configured packages which produce broken *.la's.

Ralf