Re: automake/libtool question

[David Everly]

Thank you for responding Ralf,

On 9/12/06, Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> wrote:
> [ Cc:ing both lists; let's drop the automake list ]
>
> Hello David,
>
> * David Everly wrote on Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 01:02:47AM CEST:
> >
> > HP-UX B.11.23 U ia64
> > automake (GNU automake) 1.9.6
> > autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.60
> > ltmain.sh (GNU libtool) 1.5.22 (1.1220.2.365 2005/12/18 22:14:06)
>
> > For the installed, libtool-created libraries, I am use "-L/some/path"
> > in foo_LDFLAGS when linking foo, but I seem to need to use both
> > "-L/some/path" _and_ "-R/some/path" when linking foo with installed
> > non-libtool-created libraries.
>
> Yes, I think this is intended, although I admit that the documentation
> doesn't reveal this.  (Old old convention.)
>
> > Libtool is creating a script that wrappers the non-installed foo, and
> > sets the LD_LIBRARY_PATH accordingly _except_ that there is no
> > reference to the installed non-libtool-created library paths.
>
> Are you speaking about the case with -R/some/path or without?

Yes, the ones using -R/some/path don't find themselves with
corresponding entries to LD_LIBRARY_PATH in the wrapper script.

> If with, then why does it not work out of the box, i.e., without
> having to amend LD_LIBRARY_PATH?

The reason I found this, is that someone had inadvertently set
LD_LIBRARY_PATH to an older version of the library in a different
directory.  During our build we need to run the executable from the
build directory, and since they had LD_LIBRARY_PATH set, it superseded
the -R/some/path, and this caused failure.

This alone, does not make me think there is a libtool bug, but the
fact that paths are inconsistently added to LD_LIBRARY_PATH does.

Looking in the wrapper script, I noticed that, even though chatr of
the actual executable showed similarly hard coded paths to both the
libtool-created libraries as to the -R/some/path ones, there was the
inconsistency the -R/some/path entries not being present in
LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

On our HP system, it might even be argued that the wrapper script
should ensure that LD_LIBRARY_PATH is not set so that all the paths
compiled in by libtool  can be honored.

> (I don't deny that there could be a bug; if there is, then we should add
> a test case to expose it, and fix it.)

I suppose a test case would be to build and install (not to the system
path) a libtool library and a non-libtool library to mutually
exclusive paths.  Then use libtool to link an executable to both
shared libraries.

> Cheers,
> Ralf