Re: AM_GNU_GETTEXT(use-libtool) and Automake's "make distcheck"

[Simon Josefsson]

Bruno Haible <address@hidden> writes:

> Simon Josefsson writes:
>
>> The reason I discovered the use-libtool switch was that libtool
>> complained that linking with .a archives was non-portable, although I
>> never encountered a platform were it was actually a problem (and I
>> tried it on cygwin, AIX, HP-UX and more).
>
> It is unportable to create a shared library with -l options that refer
> to .a archives. If your package indeed creates a shared library, and
> the shared library uses the gettext() function, it is actually better
> if you link with the shared libintl.so. To do this, simply use
>      AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external])
> instead of
>      AM_GNU_GETTEXT([use-libtool]).
>
> If you don't create shared library then I don't understand what the
> libtool warning is about.

I'm indeed creating a shared library that uses gettext().  But I also
create one application that also uses gettext(), and I want it to be
able to use gettext even when the system doesn't provide it, so I
guess use-libtool is the best choice.