From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jun 6 14:54:38 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 7E19464C for ; Fri, 6 Jun 2014 14:54:38 +0000 (UTC) Received: from freefall.freebsd.org (freefall.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206c::16:87]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 46CCB2A03 for ; Fri, 6 Jun 2014 14:54:38 +0000 (UTC) Received: from freefall.freebsd.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.14.8/8.14.8) with ESMTP id s56EsbKb013704 for ; Fri, 6 Jun 2014 14:54:37 GMT (envelope-from bdrewery@freefall.freebsd.org) Received: (from bdrewery@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.14.9/8.14.9/Submit) id s56Esbis013702 for freebsd-ports@freebsd.org; Fri, 6 Jun 2014 14:54:37 GMT (envelope-from bdrewery) Received: (qmail 25991 invoked from network); 6 Jun 2014 09:54:35 -0500 Received: from unknown (HELO blah) (freebsd@shatow.net@67.182.131.225) by sweb.xzibition.com with ESMTPA; 6 Jun 2014 09:54:35 -0500 Message-ID: <5391D62D.205@FreeBSD.org> Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 09:54:37 -0500 From: Bryan Drewery Organization: FreeBSD User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Tijl Coosemans , Alexander Leidinger Subject: Re: To all port maintainers: libtool References: <20140508002420.5d37e7f6@kalimero.tijl.coosemans.org> <20140508212756.00000df3@Leidinger.net> <20140509001641.63310821@kalimero.tijl.coosemans.org> <53908119.5040505@FreeBSD.org> <20140605185303.474063c6@kalimero.tijl.coosemans.org> <20140606150224.Horde.DQm9mw37wR_4m0sWWrikjA1@webmail.leidinger.net> <20140606162736.205806af@kalimero.tijl.coosemans.org> In-Reply-To: <20140606162736.205806af@kalimero.tijl.coosemans.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 14:54:38 -0000 On 6/6/14, 9:27 AM, Tijl Coosemans wrote: > On Fri, 06 Jun 2014 15:02:24 +0200 Alexander Leidinger wrote: >> Quoting Tijl Coosemans (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. > My main question was non-ports consumers though. What is the impact on them? We're talking a lot about bumping revisions and forcing rebuilds. Will non-ports consumers require rebuild or changes if .la files are missing? Would these non-ports consumers be able to properly build and link without .la files and without modifications? These .la files seem similar to .pc files which are often critical to out-of-tree consumers that assume Linux /usr paths instead of /usr/local paths. -- Regards, Bryan Drewery