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Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2014 16:27:36 +0200
From: Tijl Coosemans <tijl@FreeBSD.org>
To: Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@leidinger.net>
Subject: Re: To all port maintainers: libtool
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Cc: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org, Bryan Drewery <bdrewery@freebsd.org>
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On Fri, 06 Jun 2014 15:02:24 +0200 Alexander Leidinger wrote:
> Quoting Tijl Coosemans <tijl@freebsd.org> (from Thu, 5 Jun 2014  
> 18:53:03 +0200):
>> On Thu, 05 Jun 2014 09:39:21 -0500 Bryan Drewery wrote:
>>> I don't know what .la files are used for and have no time currently to
>>> research it.
>>>
>>> What is the impact to non-ports consumers of removing .la files? Do they
>>> also need patches to make them build?
>>
>> Removing a .la file is somewhat like a library version bump.  Anything
>> that depends on it needs to be recompiled.
> 
> I remember from tests waaaaay in the past that not all programs will  
> be happy when the .la files are not there. I remember that I once  
> tried to remove the .la files but it didn't work as the program wanted  
> to open the .la files (after recompile). Maybe libltdl is openening  
> them? Did you make some checks/tests in this regard?

Essentially .la files are small shell scripts that set some variables so
in theory they can be used in all kinds of places, but this seems of
little practical value.  Libltdl can open and parse .la files (to find
the name of the .so file it can dlopen) but it can also work directly
with .so files.

If a program uses .la files directly then the port can't delete them of
course, but so far I haven't encountered such programs.