Re: RFC: magic libtool .la removal

[Colin Walters <walters@verbum.org>]

On Tue, 2013-06-18 at 12:05 -0400, Colin Walters wrote:

> Yeah, I dunno...maybe someone needs to fork libtool.

I should follow up to this; the thing is, libtool is at the intersection
of so many cross-cutting issues:

* RPM-style multilib vs Debian-style multiarch
* Supporting libraries that use pkg-config vs those that still
  sadly don't
* Windows vs Darwin vs GNU/Linux (in all its variations)
* Cross vs native builds
* "sysroot" support
* Plugins: libltdl  (and how that interacts with other cross-platform
  module loaders like e.g. GModule)
* Component-internal build system vs external interaction; specifically
  libtool makes it easy to run *uninstalled* binaries, which is
  quite useful, and to do that inside the tree does require
  extra metadata in .la files

So when I say .la files are worthless and broken, I really mean just for
GNU/Linux systems (generally native builds, but likely also cross), and
where things I care about know how to find .so files instead of .la,
and only for *external* build system interaction; having .la files
*inside* the build tree for a single component is fine, etc.

I can't say for sure myself that having libtool unilaterally stop
installing .la files wouldn't break anything; maybe there's some library
out there that doesn't use pkg-config and relies on consumers using
dependency_libs.  But I do think it's at best unnecessary for the use
case above; so maybe it should come down to an option, or something.