Hi James,
On Sun, Jan 06, 2019 at 08:33:12AM -0500, James McCoy wrote:
> I package a number of projects that write simple Makefiles that directly
> use libtool, with no sign of autotools. Does this mean that I'm
> expected to patch all of those builds systems locally to use autotools?
As much as I would like to tell you otherwise, that's my understanding.
libtool seems to have been designed as an add-on to autotools and while
Debian has packaged a libtool output in libtool-bin, that package only
works for native builds. The "libtool" command must be different for any
distinct pair of build and host architecture. With around 10 release
architectures and more ports that'd result in hundreds of libtools, so
the only reasonable way is to generate it at build time. If you find an
easier way to generate it than autotools, please tell me. Indeed, what I
did for lua5.3 is creating an addon autotools project just for creating
a libtool to use with the Makefile build system. Possibly, the Debian
libtool package could carry a "make-me-a-libtool-for ${DEB_BUILD_ARCH}
${DEB_HOST_ARCH}"?
Helmut
