shrext and Autoconf

[Fabrice Bauzac]

Hello there,

First, thanks to everyone.  Maintaining libtool is far from being an
easy task, while it is such a useful tool.

I think I have discovered a problem in current versions of libtool
(1.5.6 to 1.5.10 at least).

I use libtool with Autoconf.  When "configure" is run, a file
"libtool" is generated.  Let's call that file "GEN" instead of its
real name to avoid confusion.  That file is created from different
sources, notably configure itself and ltmain.sh.

configure inserts several lines into GEN.  Among them:

# Shared library suffix (normally ".so").
shrext='.so'

ltmain.sh inserts several lines into GEN.  Among them:

# Darwin sucks
eval std_shrext=\"$shrext_cmds\"

The same ltmain.sh variable is now called shrext_cmds, but was called
shrext before in GEN.  It means that there are problems with library
extensions if we use Autoconf 2.59 with current versions of libtool.

I'm the maintainer of a library, libcdaudio.  The shrext issue does
not prevent my library from installing and functionning correctly on
my Debian GNU/x86 system, but the library is installed as
libcdaudio.1.0.0 instead of libcdaudio.so.1.0.0.

I guess it has an impact on portability.

Just to let you know.

If you need to contact me, please CC: to my e-mail address, since I'm
not a subscriber of bug-libtool.

Thanks.

-- 
fabrice bauzac