Re: Missing .la files

[Ken Brown <kbrown at cornell dot edu>]

On 2/17/2014 3:25 PM, Yaakov (Cygwin/X) wrote:
> On 2014-02-17 13:28, Ken Brown wrote:
> > I know there has been a change in cygport so that by default, .la files
> > are no longer shipped.  But the .la files for fontconfig, expat, and
> > freetype are needed for the Cygwin build of xetex.exe for the native TeX
> > Live distribution.  This is a static build.  (Native TeX Live uses
> > static builds to reduce library dependencies.)
>
> AFAICS the static linkage is the issue here, not the .la files:
>
> > The .la files are present in the x86 distro but not the x86_64 distro.
> > Without the .la files, libtool produces a link command line
> >
> >    g++ ... -o xetex.exe ... -lfontconfig -lexpat -lfreetype ...,
>
> g++ -static?

Yes.

> > resulting in error messages like
> >
> > /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-cygwin/4.8.2/../../../../x86_64-pc-cygwin/bin/ld:
> > cannot find -lfontconfig
>
> g++/ld do NOT need .la files in order to link libraries properly.  But
> when linking with -static, .dll.a files will be ignored and only
> libNAME.a files will be found.  (That's why Cygwin's own implibs are .a
> and not .dll.a.)  Since building packages with --disable-static is now
> the default, attempting to link with most libraries will result in such
> an error.

OK, thanks for the explanation.  As is obvious, I know very little about 
how libraries work.

> > With the .la files present, the command line becomes
> >
> >    g++ ... -o xetex.exe ...  /usr/lib/libfontconfig.dll.a
> > /usr/lib/libexpat.dll.a /usr/lib/libfreetype.dll.a ...
>
> Which may actually be a bug in libtool by ignoring (or at least changing
> the meaning of) -static.
>
> > A workaround is to copy the .la files from my x86 installation to my
> > x86_64 distro.
>
> Please don't do that.
>
> >   If not, can the .la files for those three libraries be added to the
> > x86_64 distro?
>
> That's clearly not necessary.  The real question is if we should be
> providing static libraries.  Fedora has moved away from them for the
> most part (and they also remove .la files), and we have been doing the
> same for a while.  Keeping in mind that there is no completely static
> linkage on Cygwin, and we already have a dynamically linked texlive in
> the distro, I'm not convinced that there is a real need to provide
> static libraries for all of its many dependencies.
>
> But as I wrote that, it occurred to me that IIRC texlive can be built
> with either system or bundled dependencies.  Wouldn't their distribution
> be built with --without-system-*?

Yes, for all the libraries that they bundle.  But they don't bundle the 
three libraries I mentioned.  So my revised request is that Cygwin 
provide static libraries for fontconfig, expat, and freetype.  If you 
think this is inappropriate, can you suggest another way for me to deal 
with the problem?  I could of course build the static libraries myself, 
but then it becomes difficult for others to replicate the build.

Ken