Re: Factoring out common code from 2 programs into new library

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello David,

* David Bruce wrote on Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 03:22:33AM CEST:
> (this is more of a general autotools/packaging question than a
> specific autoconf issue - please advise if there is a better list for
> this).

Well, you touch Automake and Libtool issues, but moving to one of their
lists won't really make that much of a difference, I guess.

> As it stands now, the "tarball" installation procedure is:
> 1. Unpack libt4kcommon, "./configure; make; sudo make install"
> 2. If needed, update /etc/ld.so.conf.d/libc.conf and re-run ldconfig
> to make sure the path used in #1 will be recognized
> 3. Unpack tuxmath (or tuxtype) and do "./configure; make; sudo make install"
> 
> Of the above, #2 seems most likely to be a problem for our users.

Well, if you use libtool, the idea should be that either you install the
library into a location found by the link editor and runtime linker by
default, or you pass appropriate -L flags to the other packages so that
the link editor will find the just-installed library.  If the libtool
.la file is not installed, then you may have to pass flags like -R for
setting the runtime path as well, otherwise libtool should pick those
appropriately for you.

The 'ldconfig -n' run during the 'sudo make install' step *should* let
ld.so find the just-installed library automatically; of course that only
works with directories which are already searched by default.

> Is there a standard way to make a single tarball (perhaps nested) that
> will install both the lib and the program with a single "./configure;
> make; sudo make install", and make sure the location of the lib will
> be recognized by the system? Or is the above procedure about as simple
> as we can expect it to be for those who install from source?

Well, I guess you can make a small super-package that does at least some
of the above steps I outlined automatically.  If you need help, please
post what you have there and what doesn't work.  Actually, please also
post if you have something that works for you.  Thanks.

Cheers,
Ralf