Re: Core updates status

[Efraim Flashner]

On Thu, May 09, 2024 at 11:38:07AM -0400, Maxim Cournoyer wrote:
> Hi Andreas,
> 
> Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> writes:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > Am Mon, May 06, 2024 at 10:47:13AM +0200 schrieb Josselin Poiret:
> >> Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com> writes:
> >> > I don't mind too much; when we re-enable the change we should add a
> >> > phase to the gnu-build-system automatically deleting/moving the libtool
> >> > archives. so that we're covered.
> >> 
> >> I agree, although we'll have to be careful since some packages might
> >> need them if they don't use pkg-config!
> >
> > I am a little bit confused by the suggestion; you mean removing all .la
> > files from all packages?
> 
> Yes!
> 
> > I thought they were there for a reason, and usually recorded the
> > dependencies. For instance, doing a "guix build mpc" and looking at
> > libmpc.la, my impression is that I see correct information.
> 
> libtool records the *transitive* dependencies, as would be useful when
> doing static builds but not shared builds, as the dependencies are
> already recorded in the RUNPATH of the built ELF binaries.  For our
> overwhelming common case (shared libraries) on GNU+Linux, these files
> are thus unnecessary and when used they lead to over-linking (due to
> listing the whole *transitive* dependencies) for shared library.  That
> in turn muddles the dependency graph (as more references get retain in
> the RUNPATH) and forces us to propagate more stuff.
> 
> > Why would
> > one want to force upstream to add a pkgconfig dependency additionally
> > to libtool? Or do I misunderstand the suggestion?
> 
> I hope my explanation above make it clear why libtool for our common
> case of building shared libraries is not useful.
> 
> It could be useful when building shared libraries or targeting some
> systems such as Android, which linker is very dumb or so I've heard. My
> suggestion is to delete them by default, or move them to a 'libtool'
> output when one is available (similarly to how we handle debug symbol
> files).
> 
> -- 
> Thanks,
> Maxim

It would be interesting to move them to a 'static' or a 'libtool' output
by default.

-- 
Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   רנשלפ םירפא
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