Re: [Bug-readline] Build readline with libtool?

[Michael Haubenwallner]

On 04/15/14 14:26, Chet Ramey wrote:
> On 4/15/14, 5:00 AM, Michael Haubenwallner wrote:
>> Is there a specific reason not to build readline with libtool,
>> but maintain all the sharedlib platform details locally?
> 
> libtool is large, slow, overly complicated, and introduces tremendous
> overhead for even the simplest tasks.

Agreed. But there are platforms still in use where creating full-featured
shared libraries is everything else but a simple task. And I do not expect
readline itself to become libtoolize'd, but to allow for using an externally
provided libtool script for (maybe site-specific) shared library creation.

>> At the moment I'm preparing a patch to allow for using externally
>> provided libtool as fallback, in case @SHARED_TARGET@ is empty
>> because of --disable-shared or SHLIB_STATUS=unsupported.
> 
> Is there some existing system for which this (unsupported) is an actual
> problem?

It's not the 'unsupported' part. For AIX I've found a non-trivial, but still
manpage-following way to create shared libraries with full 'SONAME' support.
It was fairly "easy" to implement this way within libtool, because of its
already existing many-platforms/many-variants support "framework".
What I'm tired of is reinventing the wheel for each home-brewed many-platform
sharedlib support again and again. Instead, I'd love to see anyone to at least
/allow/ outsourcing the shared library creation to libtool.

Thanks!
/haubi/