Re: Use libtldl but do not package it (was: libtool --mode=execute regressions)

[Gary V . Vaughan]

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Hallo Ralf,

On 17 Sep 2004, at 09:38, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> Suppose I am writing some software package S.  It makes use of libltdl.
> I do not want to ship the libltdl sources with it.  Rather, I want to
> require the users of S to separately install libltdl on their system
> (given software distributions with decent package dependency handling,
> this might not be such a bad thing to do).  Does Libtool support this?
> If so, then the documentation does not explicitly state this (and how
> to achieve it).  It /seems/ to work for me if I use
>   LTDL_CONVENIENCE
>   LT_INIT
>   LT_WITH_LTDL
> and `libtoolize' without --ltdl.

There is no explicit support for that in libtool, but only because no 
one has tried it and filed a bug report.  Libtool certainly *should* 
support that, but
being a belt & braces kind of guy, I also ship a copy of libltdl that 
my package has been tested with incase the package builder didn't 
install libltdl, or can't get her installed libltdl to work with my 
package.

I guess LT_WITH_LTDL needs to be enhanced to *deliberately* link 
against a correctly installed libltdlc.la and/or libltdl.la even in the 
absence of
an in tree libltdl directory.  If it works at the moment, that is just 
serendipity.

> > More test cases?  Fantastic!  Libltdl particularly has almost no test
> > coverage at all at the moment :-(
>
> The most annoying part about more testcases is that the comment about
> ordering a pizza will soon be a major understatement.

The problem with the current testsuite is that it calls autoreconf all 
over the place, and *that* is really slow.  I'm hoping we can eliminate 
a whole bunch of tests in that class by moving to Autotest.  Even if 
there are still several left after converting to Autotest, at least the 
*demo directories won't be hanging around causing bootstrap and `cvs 
up; make' and the like to wander off for twenty minutes to autoreconf 
all the demo dirs.

At the moment making a release really bites, because as you follow the 
release recipe you end up autoreconfing all the demo dirs 3 times, and 
running the entire test suite at least twice before you even have a 
tarball to upload.

Maybe we can change the comment to `go out for a 3 course meal'. ;-)

Cheers,
        Gary.
- --
Gary V. Vaughan      ())_.  address@hidden,gnu.org}
Research Scientist   ( '/   http://tkd.kicks-ass.net
GNU Hacker           / )=   http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool
Technical Author   `(_~)_   http://sources.redhat.com/autobook

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