Re: [gentoo-dev] The future of elibtoolize

[James Le Cuirot]

On Tue, 27 Sep 2016 11:24:19 +0200
Alexis Ballier <aballier@g.o> wrote:

> > You said that flameeyes raised this about 10 years ago. It has
> > indeed been 10 years!
> >
> > https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/caa153de0d23dc264330f5e702f26e58
> >
> > The solution he preferred back then was to split elibtoolize into
> > its own package and have Portage depend on it. I hadn't considered
> > that and I quite like it too. There was only one brief reply to the
> > thread back then. Can you think of any downsides now?
>
>
> Well, I don't see any fundamental difference in specing 'call this
> utility' vs. proper profile.bashrc. If you don't want specing, then
> indeed an utility is the way to go, but this could imply some packages
> build with portage because it elibtoolizes them and fail with PMs that
> don't.

So we mandate it in PMS.

> Also, keep in mind that with an external utility you have far less
> control on what is executed than with something in $PORTDIR: people
> may use an older buggy version of the utility, while when shipping it
> in $PORTDIR you are sure that the version is up to date.

I was going to say what kent\n said, that Portage itself can just as
easily be outdated. He also makes a good point about depending on a
minimum version when necessary. This shouldn't be needed often. Ideally
Portage would keep pulling in a recent version anyway.

I went ahead and converted libtool.eclass into an external script with
very few changes to start with, just as a proof of concept. I removed
the few references to other eclass helpers but still retained a little
dependence on variables exported by Portage. I then stuck a call to
this to near the top of econf() and tried out some packages, including
those that had failed on me before. Well whaddya know, it works. I
guess I should continue?

-- 
James Le Cuirot (chewi)
Gentoo Linux Developer