[gentoo-dev-announce] .la files removal news item (GLEP 42)

[gentoo-dev-announce] .la files removal news item (GLEP 42)

[Tomáš Chvátal]

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Hi lads,
due to recent situation about .la files status we would like to inform
users about this situation. See attached file that we propose to be
included as news item.

Step 2 will be finding global policy how to get rid of them as fast as
possible  without too much more hassle for our users :)

--------
Tomáš Chvátal
Gentoo Linux Developer [Clustering/Council/KDE/QA/Sci/X11]
E-Mail          : scarabeus@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP        : 94A4 5CCD 85D3 DE24 FE99 F924 1C1E 9CDE 0341 4587
GnuPG ID        : 03414587

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Title: Removal of .la files
Author: Diego Elio Pettenò <flameeyes@gentoo.org>
Content-Type: text/plain
Posted: 2010-10-01
Revision: 1
News-Item-Format: 1.0

Some of you might have noticed, others might notice, a few would
probably not notice at all, that some Gentoo developers have started
removing the libtool archive files from packages that they maintain;
these changes have some times been applied to stable ebuilds as well,
but in all cases they won't be applied unless the package is re-emerged.

Removing .la files can cause, though, temporary disruption in the build
processes of libraries depending on those involved, because of the
transitive nature of .la files. For instance you could experiences
something like this:

libtool: link: `/usr/lib/libdbus-1.la' is not a valid libtool archive

with libdbus-1.la being replaced by other library names. If this is the
case, _do not panic_! Nothing is irremediably broken and nothing will
have to be rebuilt!

First of all, you should install lafilefixer and let it pass through the
currently-installed system:

# emerge lafilefixer
# lafilefixer --justfixit

This will convert the references to libtool archives to the -llibname
form, which works both with and without them.

Secondly, you can avoid any future requirement for this by sanitising
the newly installed .la files; this can be done either by using the
(currently testing) Portage 2.1.9 series, or by adding the following
snippet to your /etc/portage/bashrc:

post_src_install() {
    lafilefixer "${D}"
}

It's a one time process that _will_ save you from more breakage and work
to do in the future, so please bear with us.

We'll be looking forward to make this more widely available knowledge
and we hope to be able to provide a better experience for all of you at
the end of this (bumpy) journey.

For more informations please see post [1] to gentoo-user mailing list
that contain more detailed description.

[1] http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-user/msg_b144a138af822433344f6064e2fa9c66.xml

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