Get rid of libtool archives (*.la)

[vbraun]

• They are a nuisance since they can't contain relative paths.
• Fedora packaging guide line says "Libtool archives, foo.la files, should not be included"
• the whole idea of Libtool Archives is, nowadays, considered obsolete (https://autotools.io/libtool/lafiles.html)
• Anything that can be done with libtool archives can be done better with pkg-config

CC: @kiwifb

Component: build

Keywords: sd70

Author: Volker Braun

Branch/Commit: dc6d482

Reviewer: François Bissey

Issue created by migration from https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/19549

[vbraun]

Changed keywords from none to sd70

[vbraun]

comment:2

Francois, any objection?

[kiwifb]

comment:3

Replying to @vbraun:

Francois, any objection?

None.

[kiwifb]

comment:4

I am not sure what other answer you were expecting from me. Distros like Gentoo (and most others I would think) get rid of them. The good question is how to do it in sage? The easiest way would be for sage-spkg to do the scanning. We don't want it to be done as an afterthought once the sage build is finished.

The problem is that you don't have a staging phase before putting the file in your tree. So you cannot stage then remove the ugly stuff and then put it in your tree (or prefix if you will). Which means that essentially you may have to scan the whole $SAGE_LOCAL/lib for .la file after you have issued make install for every package. Could it be added to sage-spkg to do once spkg-install proper is finished? How would that interact with spkg-check is also something to think about because building test may rely on these .la files.

[vbraun]

Branch: u/vbraun/get_rid_of_libtool_archives

[sagetrac-git]

Commit: dc6d482

[sagetrac-git]

Branch pushed to git repo; I updated commit sha1. This was a forced push. New commits:

dc6d482

Erase libtool archive files after running spkg-install

[vbraun]

Author: Volker Braun

[vbraun]

comment:7

I'm just deleting them after spkg-check; Not sure if its necessary but can't hurt.

[kiwifb]

Reviewer: François Bissey

[kiwifb]

comment:8

That'll do, it will depend on the package. In m4rie test are built during make all. Not really fantastic in my opinion but that's a case where it wouldn't be necessary.

[vbraun]

Changed branch from u/vbraun/get_rid_of_libtool_archives to dc6d482