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

[Diego Elio Pettenò]

Il giorno mar, 05/10/2010 alle 09.52 +0200, Angelo Arrifano ha scritto:
>
> Like Richard said "Gentoo is about choice...
>
> By removing .la files, you are taking away that choice from the user.
> For you they might be useless, for some user (or entire software
> house)
> it can be its holly grail for library versioning and linking. I don't
> really feel like forcing users to change their build setups just
> because
> we think they are useless, do you?
> - It is decisions like this one that *might* give us bad reputation.
>
> Should we also start removing package-config files just because there
> are better ways to detect if a certain package is installed?

Again, I ask you: how do libtool archive work? What is lost by removing
them? How can any software out there rely on them?

Can you provide any specific use case, or are you now arguing for
"choice for choice's sake"?

Should we remove /usr/bin/xml2-config? No. Why? Because there are
packages out there not using pkg-config to detect libxml2, upstream
libxml2 provides that explicitly and allows it to be used as such:

$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS) `xml2-config --cflags` foo.c -o foo
`xml2-config --libs`

Should we remove /usr/lib/libxml2.la? Yes. Why? Because upstream does
not explicitly provide it (it's a byproduct of libtool), and they don't
require/ask to rely on it (otherwise it wouldn't provide pkg-config
or .pc files).

Again, I'm not arguing over semantics or feelings here, I'm arguing with
facts; can you argue with facts or are you just going to quote Richard
again and propose "choice for choice's sake"?

-- 
Diego Elio Pettenò — “Flameeyes”
http://blog.flameeyes.eu/

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