Re: [patch #9687] bugfix: make -export-dynamic imply --whole-archive

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Sun, 21 Nov 2021, Alex Ameen wrote:
> Overall I think we're on the same page. I understand that `libtool' is 
> ultimately intended to provide cross-platform consistency as a portability 
> wrapper around each platform's various compilers, linkers, and loaders. It is 
> certainly not my intention to promote a specific tool or platform over 
> another.

I am glad that our new maintainer is philosophically on the same page 
and also has excellent skills.

I think that (similar to the influence of GNU/FSF philosophies on 
software development) libtool should help guide application developers 
to to use the most portable approaches while achieving their own 
objectives.  From this standpoint, libtool (and Autotools in general) 
are not just 'tools' (like 'ld') but help guide users (developers) so 
that if they follow guidelines, and what the tools intend to promote, 
their applications are most likely to be portable and still work well.

If the development/porting problem is looked at using Venn diagrams, 
then there would be a proportion of features/solutions in common 
amongst modern targets and those should be the features/solutions 
which are promoted by Autotools.  In some cases the description of 
what is wanted can be at a high enough level that the desired 
low-level behavior can be accomplished entirely differently on 
different targets (because of how they work).

In Autotools, the above has worked well, although there have been many 
complaints over the years about libtool behavior regarding explicit 
dependencies (via ".la" files) whereas leveraging implicit 
dependencies are usually prefered by distribution maintainers.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
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