[Fedora-packaging] Re: libtool(.la) archive policy proposal

Axel Thimm Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
Tue Oct 3 09:09:53 UTC 2006


On Tue, Oct 03, 2006 at 08:00:28AM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-10-02 at 21:43 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 02, 2006 at 09:01:34PM +0200, Enrico Scholz wrote:
> > > Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net (Axel Thimm) writes:
> 
> > > >> 2. somebody has to convince libtool people to apply this patch. Does not
> > > >>    seem to be trivial either (look at the more or less trivial multilib
> > > >>    patch in the Red Hat libtool-package which is still not applied).
> > > >
> > > > I wouldn't derive from one patch to another. What you perhaps consider
> > > > trivial and acceptable may be different for the upstream authors and
> > > > vice versa. I also didn't notice any discussion about the multilib
> > > > patch on the libtool list, so perhaps this wasn't even submitted?
> > > 
> > > Dunno; patch exists for 4 years already so I would wonder when it was never
> > > submitted.
> I recall an initial version had been submitted several years ago.
> Due to lack of generality it had never been applied. The RH dev never
> showed up again afterwards. Seemingly he didn't like what he had got to
> hear and resorted to "worksforme".

He only posted a first attempt on the list and explicitely mentioned
that this is not ready for patch submission yet himself. There was no
rejection or similar, there was just no momentum to push it further.

> > > I thought, RH packagers were active in libtool development but I
> > > might be wrong here.
> Though libtool to a large extend is a RH invention (Alex O. had been one
> of its key developers), RH devs had been more or less absent in libtool
> development for many years.

To be honest all people from RH that have worked on libtool did so
before entering RH, comapring the dates of employment and their
activity in libtool one might even assume the contrary ;)
(in reality these people were pulled into different tasks like
Alexandre going gcc and having to leave libtool behind).

> > Did you take a look at the multilib patch? It breaks other Linux
> > distributions, which is why it was never submitted to
> > libtool-patches. Let's not blame upstream for that.
> > 
> > libtool has just received no love at all in Red Hat land for whatever
> > reason.
> 
> I guess everybody agrees that libtool is mess, but ... it's still the
> best we've currently got, when it comes to portably building shared
> libs ;)

And it is the best upstream has, so the argument "on Linux we need no
libtool" doesn't carry (not that Ralf says so, I'm just extending his
argument). Projects will continue to use libtool and if we want to do
something then it's fixing aspects of libtool instead of flaming it.

But as I already said to someone here in PM: Personally I'm not
interested in another crusade against windmills, I'm curious about how
to improve stuff, but I'm not investing in brain-washing people
anymore. ;)
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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