Installing libraries: .lai error: No such file or directory

[John A Hawkinson]

Hi:

    I'm trying to figure out how to use libtool to install a library,
and I'm running into

install: .libs/libfoo.lai: No such file or directory

    This seems to have come up several times in the past few years on
the mailing list, but I've been unable to find a solution (Makefile
ordering issues were suggested?). I see the problem with libtool 2.4.6
under OS X, libtool 2.4.2 under Ubuntu, and even libtool 1.3 under
Solaris.

    I assume I'm doing something wrong, but I don't know what.

    Here's a reproduction case (Ubuntu):

$ mkdir -p /tmp/lt/prefix
$ cd /tmp/lt
$ cat > foo.c
int foo() { return 0; }
$ libtool --mode=compile gcc -c foo.c
libtool: compile:  gcc -c foo.c  -fPIC -DPIC -o .libs/foo.o
libtool: compile:  gcc -c foo.c -o foo.o >/dev/null 2>&1
$ libtool --mode=link gcc -o libfoo.la foo.lo
libtool: link: ar cru .libs/libfoo.a .libs/foo.o
libtool: link: ranlib .libs/libfoo.a
libtool: link: ( cd ".libs" && rm -f "libfoo.la" && ln -s "../libfoo.la"
"libfoo.la" )
$ libtool --mode=install install -c libfoo.la /tmp/lt/prefix
libtool: install: install -c .libs/libfoo.lai /tmp/lt/prefix/libfoo.la
install: cannot stat '.libs/libfoo.lai': No such file or directory


    It seems like this is a pretty basic bare-bones usage. Compile an object
file with libtool, link into a library, and install the library. No
change with gcc versus clang, or compile explicitly to a .lo file
instead of trusting -c.

    In a previous thread --debug was requested. The output is voluminous,
so I've posted it at
https://gist.github.com/johnhawkinson/f2ba63eaf19f7b9f921943a83ebea1af

Thanks. Help?

p.s.: Please let me know if this is more appropriate for bug-libtool@,
but at this point, that seems premature?

address@hidden
  John Hawkinson