Frank Peters posted on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:24:04 -0400 as excerpted:

> On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:08:58 +0000 (UTC)
> Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@...> wrote:
> 
> 
>> FWIW, I've been using a PKG_INSTALL_MASK="*.la" setting here in my
>> make.conf for some time, now.  That keeps portage from installing the
>> files entirely.
>>
>>
> That's a good suggestion, but there is one minor problem remaining.
> 
> Although I rely on portage to do all the "heavy lifting" for me, there
> is a small number of packages that I, for various reasons, still want to
> install myself -- and I'm sure there are lots of others that do this as
> well.  These self-installed packages will often insert .la files into
> the tree, and, in fact, I believe that this kind of condition had caused
> my original ".la file not found" problem.
> 
> So the .la issue is definitely something for everyone to keep in mind,
> and especially for those who may self-install an occasional extra
> package.

Question:  Why don't you create (or modify the gentoo/overlay tree 
version, if you can find one) an ebuild which does the installation using 
portage?  That way it still tracks it, and provided you keep reasonable 
dependencies in the ebuild, it'll track them too.

FWIW, there's a couple things I install privately.  One is a live net-nntp/
pan, from the khaley repo, testing branch, for which I created an ebuild, 
which of course would eliminate the *.la files if any (it's a leaf 
executable package, no such files, but if there were...).  The other is 
the kernel, for which I use my own non-ebuild scripts and package.provided 
a 2.6.9999 kernel for portage dependency purposes.  Of course the kernel 
doesn't have *.la files to worry about... =:^)

Otherwise, I'd no-doubt script the build and installation using my own 
scripts, for much the same reason I have with the kernel -- it's a 
repeated action that lends itself to automation -- and appending a find-
and-delete on *.la files step to such a script would be reasonably 
trivial, once I had automated the rest of the process.

Or just script lafilefixer after the install, but I'd probably go the 
delete route, myself, just 'cause I'm tired of *.la file headaches and the 
less I have to see or deal with the things, the happier I am!

But you're right, that's something to think about, for those libraries 
(the only type of package that really has *.la files) you build yourself.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman