file 4.18 vs libtool dependencies autodetection

[Jeff Johnson]

On Nov 19, 2006, at 2:43 PM, Tomasz Wittner wrote:

> On Tue 14. November 2006 01:40, Jakub Bogusz wrote:
>> file 4.18 began to recognize libtool files (*.la):
>>
>> /usr/lib/librpm.la: libtool library file
>> (instead of "ASCII English text" like before)
>>
>> and it appears to enable libtool dependencies autodetection in rpm.
>> Should be use it or disable it?
> Is any profit of not disabling them? IMO generating libtool 
> (libfoo.la) P/R
> should be disabled. We could have lived without them till now, we  
> can live
> further. ;)

Wise man or wuss, depending on your point-of-view.

The reason for using "libtool(...)" dependencies is to make builds more
reproducible. There are certain dependencies hidden within *.la files
that need to be tracked explicititly in rpm dependencies to make builds
more reproducible.

OTOH, you're absoutely correct that rpm has managed to live without
libtool dependencies for years.

>>
>> If we decide to use it, then:
>> - all packages with *.la will require rebuild to generate Provides
>> - there will be needed some _noauto* in some cases:
>>   - when some *-devel contains more than one library, some of them
>>     have additional dependencies, but are rarely used (e.g.  
>> libwmf, flac)
>>   - in packages with ltdl-loaded plugins, which must have their *.la,
>>     but don't require *.la shared libraries they use
>>

Note that there may be a problem in the /usr/lib/rpm/libtooldeps.sh
script distributed with rpm-4.4.7 as well. I'm seeing some problems
building rpm using libtooldeps.sh, I'm currently having to add
libtool(...) dependencies to /etc/rpm/sysinfo to mask some deeper
problem.

The problem is surely easy to fix, there's nothing complicated in
libtooldeps.sh.

However, my main development platform atm is FC6, which is (ahem) not  
the
best platform to try to debug extracted *.la dependency chains since  
*.la
files are being haphazardly removed from FC6 packaging.

Patches gratefully accepted ;-)

hth

73 de Jeff