On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 10:31:25AM +0000, Gavin Smith wrote: > > Indeed. And for the next release you could remove all the .la files. > > What was the reason for removing the .la files in the first place? Why > would you expect that you could remove files that a package installs with > nothing going wrong? Is it usual to remove .la files in other contexts?
Hilmar may have a different answer, but it happens that in the past I was a Fedora packager and the policy to remove .la files, which can be seen here was already in place: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/#packaging-static-libraries Here is an example of what is thought about la files: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/RemoveLaFiles#Summary The reasoning is that on a platform with a good support for shared libraries, there is no need for .la files once a software is installed, either -rpath or adding a path in /etc/ld.so.conf should make sure that shared libraries are found. And for dlopened objects, there is no specific need for .la files either. As a side note, if I recall well, rpath is also frowned upon in Fedora. I actually am convinced by this reasoning, which is why I think that we should try to make sure that .la files are not needed in Texinfo on platforms with good support for shared and dlopened libraries. -- Pat
