Library dependencies

[David Shaw]

On Sun, Nov 17, 2002 at 10:36:47AM -0500, Neal H. Walfield wrote:
> > Unfortunately, OpenLDAP is terrible about changing their
> > dependencies every other release.  Until they start providing a
> > "openldap-config" script or similar (I donated one a month or two
> > ago), people are going to have to juggle the dependencies by hand via
> > LDAPLIBS for everything but the simplest LDAP configuration.  This is
> > in the NEWS file, incidentally.
> 
> This is the wrong approach.  Library dependencies on elf based systems
> can be expressed via a DT_NEEDED in the library itself; it is not the
> application's responsibility to determine which libraries a library
> depends on.

Sure, but GnuPG and OpenLDAP both run on non-ELF systems as well ;)

There are other uses for xxxx-config scripts as well (note how many
libraries provide them these days).  They can automatically tell the
./configure script where include files for the library are, any
compiler flags to use or not to use, etc.  I'm not saying this is
necessarily the best way to go, but it is certainly the most widely
used and arguably the simplest solution.

Still, yes, if OpenLDAP provided DT_NEEDED then that would be great.
I totally agree with you that it is not the responsibility of the
application to determine what libraries a library depends on.
Unfortunately, the way things stand now, it has become the
responsibility of the user compiling GnuPG which has obvious
limitations.

David

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   David Shaw  |  dshaw at jabberwocky.com  |  WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
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