Libtool?

Started by Peter Eisentrautabout 21 years ago4 messages
#1Peter Eisentraut
peter_e@gmx.net

Various recent and not so recent problem reports got me thinking again
that it might be worth switching our shared library build system to
libtool. Among those are:

- Guesswork about which spellings of -rpath, -export-dynamic, -fpic etc.
work on a particular platform or compiler.

- Lack of information about which libraries libpq depends on.

- Makefile.shlib can only build one library per directory.

- pgxs is pretty ugly and inflexible because of the above.

- Static libraries built with -fpic, which is sometimes considered a
bug.

- Misbehavior with rpaths pointing the wrong way during the regression
tests and similar problems could maybe be tackled.

Considering that pretty much everyone uses libtool these days, I'm not
too worried about portability.

(And before anyone asks: No, libtool does not require automake.)

I think it may be worth trying out. Comments?

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/

#2Marc G. Fournier
scrappy@postgresql.org
In reply to: Peter Eisentraut (#1)
Re: Libtool?

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Various recent and not so recent problem reports got me thinking again
that it might be worth switching our shared library build system to
libtool. Among those are:

- Guesswork about which spellings of -rpath, -export-dynamic, -fpic etc.
work on a particular platform or compiler.

- Lack of information about which libraries libpq depends on.

- Makefile.shlib can only build one library per directory.

- pgxs is pretty ugly and inflexible because of the above.

- Static libraries built with -fpic, which is sometimes considered a
bug.

- Misbehavior with rpaths pointing the wrong way during the regression
tests and similar problems could maybe be tackled.

Considering that pretty much everyone uses libtool these days, I'm not
too worried about portability.

(And before anyone asks: No, libtool does not require automake.)

I think it may be worth trying out. Comments?

Does it work with Windows, or with that be a 'special case'?

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664

#3Noname
lsunley@mb.sympatico.ca
In reply to: Marc G. Fournier (#2)
Re: Libtool?

In <20050107215941.O63822@ganymede.hub.org>, on 01/07/05
at 10:00 PM, "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@postgresql.org> said:

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Various recent and not so recent problem reports got me thinking again
that it might be worth switching our shared library build system to
libtool. Among those are:

- Guesswork about which spellings of -rpath, -export-dynamic, -fpic etc.
work on a particular platform or compiler.

- Lack of information about which libraries libpq depends on.

- Makefile.shlib can only build one library per directory.

- pgxs is pretty ugly and inflexible because of the above.

- Static libraries built with -fpic, which is sometimes considered a
bug.

- Misbehavior with rpaths pointing the wrong way during the regression
tests and similar problems could maybe be tackled.

Considering that pretty much everyone uses libtool these days, I'm not
too worried about portability.

(And before anyone asks: No, libtool does not require automake.)

I think it may be worth trying out. Comments?

Does it work with Windows, or with that be a 'special case'?

It is supposed to...

Mind you, it is supposed to support OS/2 as well and I have had problems
with several projects that use it.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------
lsunley@mb.sympatico.ca
-----------------------------------------------------------

#4Andrew Dunstan
andrew@dunslane.net
In reply to: Noname (#3)
Re: Libtool?

lsunley@mb.sympatico.ca wrote:

Considering that pretty much everyone uses libtool these days, I'm not
too worried about portability.

(And before anyone asks: No, libtool does not require automake.)

I think it may be worth trying out. Comments?

Does it work with Windows, or with that be a 'special case'?

It is supposed to...

Mind you, it is supposed to support OS/2 as well and I have had problems
with several projects that use it.

libtool is actually in the MSys DTK, so it should work for the Windows
builds.

I'd be more worried about some of the less common *nix systems that we
try to support. The only way to know is to suck it and see. Take a
snapshot, libtoolize it, and ask people to test the result.

cheers

andrew