[Mageia-dev] [RFC] Removing .la files

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Christiaan Welvaart at 10/06/11 16:34 did gyre and
gimble:
> On Fri, 10 Jun 2011, Olav Vitters wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 04:35:57PM +0200, Christiaan Welvaart wrote:
>>> On Fri, 10 Jun 2011, Olav Vitters wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 04:15:01PM +0200, Christiaan Welvaart wrote:
> ....
> 
>>>>>> Seems some distributions misunderstand the need and changed the wiki
>>>>>> page. Removing .la files is needed however, otherwise you'll
>>>>>> quickly mix
>>>>>> distribution installed libraries and self-compiled libraries.
>>>>>
>>>>> What are you talking about here?
>>>
>>> <gnome-shell stuff>
>>
>> It is not gnome-shell, it is jhbuild and doing development (mainly
>> GNOME). Basic GNOME already has ~200 modules.
> 
> Then why did you quote the webpage instead of saying just that?

Because it was an example. I think most people could appreciate it as
that and work it out.

> 
>>> So you are really talking only about gnome-shell, which I can't even
>>> test because apparently it doesn't work in a VM. It is now packaged,
>>> so you don't need to build it.
>>
>> Nope, I'm talking about doing development using jhbuild. E.g. if you
>> want to contribute to GNOME, you'll have to get rid of all the .la
>> files no matter which distribution you use.
>>
>> A new GNOME does not happen automatically. It requires people to compile
>> the Git versions and committing stuff until a tarball is released and
>> packaged.
>>
>> Making such development easier would result in a better GNOME, and I
>> don't mind if the .la files stay, but prefer if they are removed.
> 
> I think doing software development related to the system you're working
> on isn't easy. For example jhbuild may not like .la files but if you
> want to use static libraries supplied by the system, .la files are quite
> useful AFAIK.
> 
> So why did you point to that webpage if it's not related to mageia at
> all, it's purely a jhbuild problem.

Because it explains the issue and the problem that people would have
using Mageia for development if the .la files remained.

> If people are using a system with
> gnome installed to develop gnome, it's not strange they run into
> problems.

I call shenanigans. I do this kind of stuff all the time. It's easy to
use a custom prefix (i.e. not /usr) if you select the right configure
options. It means you get a working system but can also develop the next
version. I've been doing this kind of stuff for years. The removal of
the .la files will make this approach much easier.

Col




-- 

Colin Guthrie
mageia(at)colin.guthr.ie
http://colin.guthr.ie/

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