On 2011-11-24 07:37-0000 Andrew Ross wrote: >> Orion, could you answer the question that occurred by one of the >> posters in the "transitive linking topics" thread on the CMake list >> about why rpmlint is complaining about this "formal" overlinking >> issue? I responded at the time by some speculation that it has to do >> with eliminating unnecessary package dependencies, but it would be >> nice if you could follow up (there if still subscribed or here, >> otherwise) with the definitive answer. >> >> Same question to Andrew about the complaints about overlinking from >> the Debian packaging software. > > Alan, > > The Debian warning is precisely for that reason. Unnecessary linkages > produce unnecessary package dependencies, which in turn adds complication > and can cause difficulties for smooth upgrades of package versions.
Hi Andrew: There was just an answer to this effect on the CMake list with what to my mind is a really good example of the benefits of dropping unnecessary linking. Hendrik Sattler said: "The issue is the packaging in distributions. When application A depends on library B (which depends on library C) but links to both B and C, you have to rebuild A and B when the ABI of C changes. If A only links to B, only B has to be rebuilt and the distribution user has to download far less. So it is an optimisation of many ressources which consumes less energy -> good :-)" > > Plus it is cleaner and clearer to only link in the required libraries. > It catches errors like the C++ one you pointed out. Apparently that error is caught on Fedora but not Debian stable for reasons I don't understand. I wonder if it is also caught on Debian testing, recent Ubuntu, etc., i.e., I wonder if Debian stable is out of step with modern distributions in this regard. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
