Re: [gentoo-dev] .la files and their future on Gentoo

[Angelo Arrifano]

On 03-10-2010 12:53, David Leverton wrote:
> On 2 October 2010 20:54, Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto
> <jmbsvicetto@g.o> wrote:
>> Given the recent activity around .la files and conflict about how to
>> deal with them, I propose we discuss this issue in this mailing list,
>> and take this issue to the council.
>> That way, we can make a global decision, taking into account all the
>> arguments for and against, find a balance, opt for a policy, inform
>> users and developers about it and move on.
>
> While I do agree that the underlying problem we're trying to solve is
> worth solving, I do have a couple of small concerns about how it's
> being done.  The first is that it seems people are judging whether a
> particular .la file is "needed" by checking whether anything currently
> in the tree needs it, but this doesn't take into account anything that
> /isn't/ in the tree yet.

This is a very good point. However, in the case of out-of-tree packages,
I think most "regular" users just use ebuilds from bugzilla (and third
party places like forums etc). Users that contribute their cooked
ebuilds should know more or less what are doing, so I guess they will
have the corresponding packages patched in one way or another, if they
require a certain .la file.

>  The second is that removing .la files
> everywhere makes it hard for people to experiment with alternative
> solutions, as testing an alternative would require modifying all the
> affected ebuilds to stop removing them.  (And yes, I am interested in
> doing so myself, although time constraints mean it might not
> happening.)
>
> Would it be too much trouble to have a standardised variable that
> means .la files should be kept?  It maybe /shouldn't/ be exposed as a
> USE flag because very few people will need it, but if it's easy to
> implement (maybe by having an eutils function to do the removal,
> checking the variable first) it would remove any objections I could
> imagine.

This seems like a very good solution. For example - usually, people
building packages manually just want the build process to work. They
don't want to spend time making an ebuild or digging around. One being
able to simply
USE="libtool" emerge foo
to restore the foo's .la files would be great.

A gentoo page properly indexed in Google and explaining what to do when
a libtool library is not found, should take care of most.

Another positive point about an .la USE flag is that users are already
used to put their USE flags on bugzilla, which should help package
maintainers to acknowledge .la related problems.
>
> As I said, these are minor points, and I wouldn't expect people to go
> to great effort to satisfy them.  Just something to consider.
>

Me being one of the persons that initially contributed code to allow
portage to fix .la files, I'm indeed happy to see the direction Gentoo
is heading. Libtool archives were (and still are for those not using
portage) a pain in the ass for cross-compilation.

Regards,
- Angelo