Hello, Michael!
> > RPM (RedHat package manager) as of version 3.0.4 uses the following macro
> > in its default configuration file
> >
> > %configure \
> > %{?__libtoolize:[ -f configure.in ] && %{__libtoolize} --copy --force} \
> ^^^^^^^^^^
> Doesn't this require package builders to install libtool. I thought
> that libtool was designed to be included in a distribution.
I think the intention was to update the libtool-related files. It should
be quite harmless as opposed to rerunning autoconf and automake. It should
be possible to prevent libtoolize from being run by undefining
__libtoolize (or by a similar trick, I haven't tried).
RPM is used on many architectures, some of which didn't have good libtool
support until recently. So it's often a good idea to update libtool.
Also config.guess and config.sub are updated. But they should not be used
if the architecture is specified.
I tend to agree that the packaging system should enforce one canonical
architecture. I don't want to install binutils for ppc-unknown-linux with
gcc for powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu on the same system just because those
packages happened to have different versions of config.guess.
But this should be done in a better way, probably with "--build"
Pavel
