On 17:24 Wed 12 Nov     , Peter Alfredsen wrote:
> On Wednesday 12 November 2008, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > And for people who want to build things statically.
> 
> That's true, but we generally don't want to do that, so that's fine. 
> If needed for a package, we just don't punt la files for it and its 
> dependencies. But generally, we should really only be building .so 
> files and they just don't need .la files.

We should enable our users to do things they want to do and not get in 
their way. That's the Gentoo philosophy.

> If someone really wants .la 
> files, we could introduce a variable:
> IWANTTHECRAPPYLAFILESANDIKNOWWHATIMDOING=yes
> to be placed in make.conf.

Where do you even usefully document its existence, if it's a feature of 
some function in some eclass?

> But the great thing about having a utility function is that you can 
> make general exceptions to the rule with tweaks like that.

Yep, just as you can with a number of other possible ways of handling 
this.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com