Re: [RFC] Removing .la files from x86

[Warren Young <wyml@etr-usa.com>]

On Aug 2, 2016, at 9:09 PM, Yaakov Selkowitz <yselkowitz@cygwin.com> wrote:
> 
> Any objections?

This script would need to consult the same package database cygcheck uses to find out if an installed Cygwin package owns each *.la file it proposes to remove.  It should not remove any other *.la file just because it happens to be in /usr/lib.

It should not remove anything in other common libdirs like /usr/local/lib.  If I’ve installed something from source and its make install rule installs the *.la file, that’s an issue for the upstream provider.

Doesn’t libtool provide some of the magic library dependency chasing that exists on Linux but almost nowhere else?

That is, if library B depends on library C, and library A depends on B, on Linux you generally only need to explicitly link to library A, and the linker will chase down B and C for you.  This doesn’t usually happen on other systems, so you may have to explicitly link to library B, and sometimes to library C as well.

A common practical example is that libpng depends on zlib, but it is sufficient on Linux to link only with -lpng, whereas porting such software to non-Linux systems generally requires appending -lz.

Would we still have that behavior on Windows without the .la files?  If not, it’s possible that some build systems would break.