[Mageia-dev] [RFC] Removing .la files

Fri Jun 10 16:26:35 CEST 2011

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 04:15:01PM +0200, Christiaan Welvaart wrote:
+> >https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/RemovingLaFiles
+> 
+> "... but the dirty hacks that jhbuild plays ..."
+> 
+> Problems with dirty hacks are NOT a valid reason to remove libtool
+> convenience libraries aka .la files.
+
+Seems you skipped the initial bit, where it explains that the .la has
+the full path.
+
+> >Seems some distributions misunderstand the need and changed the wiki
+> >page. Removing .la files is needed however, otherwise you'll quickly mix
+> >distribution installed libraries and self-compiled libraries.
+> 
+> What are you talking about here?
+
+"The particular problem with these .la files is that they have hardcoded
+paths in them. So, for example, if /usr/lib/libgnome-menu.so just
+contains the information that it requires libglib-2.0.so.0 but
+/usr/lib/libgnome-menu.la says that it wants /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.la, it
+causes libtool to link against /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so at link time.
+This is fine for a lot of typical build scenarios, but the dirty hacks
+that jhbuild plays to get it to sandbox your system understandably
+breaks. "
+
+> >Difficulty is that this only works when you remove *all* .la files. If
+> >only one is left compilation is broken.
+> 
+> It is more likely that your build system is broken. If you do not
+> want to link against system libraries, remove /lib and /usr/lib from
+> the library search dirs list.
+
+That's not enough, the .la files add libraries in /lib and /usr/lib.
+
+Fedora has for instance already removed the .la files. Other
+distributions are working on it (even Debian).
+-- 
+Regards,
+Olav
+