On Sat, 20 Nov 2021, Alex Ameen wrote:
Thanks for the follow up, this gave me a much clearer idea of the underlying
issue that you're trying to solve. I really do appreciate you taking the time
to help improve `libtool'.
You're absolutely right that `libtool' completely bungles the use of
`--whole-archive' and `--no-whole-archive' which I see as a high priority
issue. In several build systems I've built in the past I have needed to apply
manual patches to `libtool' to work around this, and I plan on merging
changes to fix this soon ( I'm taking my time to create test cases ).
I don't pretend to understand the associated issues, but please take
care that libtool does not promote solutions which only work with GNU
ld (or linkers designed to perfectly emulate GNU ld) on a limited set
of targets.
Libtool is a portability solution to encourage development of software
which is able to compile and run on many targets, even if the authors
of the software have never experienced those targets.
Linking static libraries into shared libraries is a complex topic and
is a reason why libtool offers the clumsy/inefficient "convenience
library" mechanism since it assures that the objects were compiled
properly to be used in the library they are linked into.
Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
Public Key, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/public-key.txt