Re: libtool issue

On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 07:16:54PM -0600, Peter Samuelson wrote:
> libtool goes to a lot of trouble to set library search paths while you
> compile and run your application, so that it uses libraries inside the
> build tree instead of system copies.

Does that mean "libtool tries to move all -L and -l flags for system
libraries to the end of the command line"? Because if I do that manually
the linking seems to work correctly.

After about 6 hours I had the subversion build system do just that
(I can send this as a patch to the list if it is interesting),
but libtool still kept putting working copy libraries after -L<system lib dir>
flags for some reason.

> This feature is known to be
> broken in Debian as a side effect of another more important libtool
> fix[*], but last I heard it worked fine on other platforms. I guess it
> is possible that libtool is broken everywhere now for some reason. It
> always was a difficult feature to support properly.

Looks like it.

> [*] http://bugs.debian.org/291641. Both libtool and GNU ld have been
> blamed as the root cause of this bug, which is exposed through a
> libtool change. Nobody seems eager to step in and hack a
> fix/workaround into libtool or ld, perhaps because both packages
> are intimidating.

:(

So this is probably why -L flags still end up in between the
working copy libraries on the ld command line.

And this is also why people should not write 8000+ lines long
shell scripts...

If this is really a bug in libtool, it is a major bug IMHO,
making libtool next to useless. Is the hassle with libtool
really worth it? Have alternatives been examined? Are there any?

As always though, venting alone does not help. I'll see if I can
spend more time on this some day. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

-- 
Stefan Sperling <stsp@elego.de>                 Software Developer
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