libtool 1.5 -static and installed libraries

[Howard Chu]

We just migrated from libtool-1.4.3 to 1.5.18 in the OpenLDAP CVS HEAD, 
and are seeing a new linking problem. By default we link with -static so 
that our local libtool-generated libraries get statically linked. But we 
don't use -all-static; we don't want to alter the default linking for 
system-installed libraries.

On SuSE 9.x when the libdb devel RPM is installed, a libdb.la file is 
also installed, and libtool 1.5 finds and reads this file. In this case, 
libtool chooses to link the static libdb into our slapd executable, 
rather than the shared library, even though the .la file says 
"installed=yes". This results in an unusable binary on SuSE 9.x because 
the default static library doesn't support thread-local storage/NPTL, 
while the default C library requires it. (But if the shared library is 
used instead, the runtime linker can locate the correct libdb.)

So the question is, why does linking with -static cause libtool to 
behave like -all-static was used, why does it ignore the installed 
status of the libraries?
--
  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.  http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun        http://highlandsun.com/hyc
  OpenLDAP Core Team            http://www.openldap.org/project/