Re: Installing .la files

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, Axel Thimm wrote:

> Some packages install the .la files. Looking at some rpm packages I noticed,
> that these are sometimes removed before packaging. There is currently some
> discussion about this on two packagers' mailing list (while discussing a
> standard skeleton for packaging libraries), but there seems not to be a
> libtool expert on board.
>
> Some discuss that .la is not needed on Linux, others that the installation
> procedure (configuring for /usr, installing under /var/tmp/foo-root/usr) is
> `tainting' them, which is the reason for their removal. Others say that this
> simply slows down the link process.

There is a very good reason to install (and use) the .la files.  From
the Linux-centric mind-set, Linux is the only OS in the world that
matters, but from the portable software mind-set, different platforms
may (and do) use different naming rules for the loadable module.  If
you use libltdl, your software can always consistently specify the .la
file as the "module", and libltdl will look in the .la file to find
the real module name to load.  The package I maintain has about 100
loadable modules, and loading the module via the .la file doesn't seem
to slow things down noticeably.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
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http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen