Re: some general help needed

[Richard Ash]

On Sat, 2008-08-16 at 10:52 +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> This sounds like you're using it wrongly.  Linking against an
> uninstalled copy of a library is one of libtool's strengths,
> and I know very few open bugs about it, so if you know a use
> case that doesn't work, I ask you to please report it to the
> bug-libtool list.

Don't get me wrong, using libtool to link against an uninstalled copy of
a libtool library is fine. The problem is when libfoo uses libtool, and
then I want to modify my autoconf-only package (which I can't convert to
automake/libtool because it is a collaborative project, and Makefile.in
is distinctly custom) to link against the uninstalled copy of libfoo.

Because I'm not using libtool .la files are more or less unusable, so I
have to go poking around to see where .a files might have been put, and
code those paths in to my configure script. When libfoo upgrades, I have
a strong chance of breakage. As one document put it, if you are trying
to link against the output of libool without using libtool, you are
rather on your own.

Richard