RFD: gettext, iconv, packaging...

Charles Wilson cwilson@ece.gatech.edu
Mon Jun 24 06:06:00 GMT 2002


Charles Wilson wrote:

> Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> 
> 
>> If only these two tools are using cyggettext*.dll and the other one,
>> why not linking statically against them?  I don't see a reason to
>> have dlls hanging around for that purpose.
> 
> 
> 
> No, you got it backwards.  There are only two programs -- the two MAIN 
> programs "gettext.exe" and "ngettext.exe" -- that DON'T use the 
> cyggettext*.dll code.  There are 6 or so "development" oriented programs 
> that DO use the code.  Why include duplicate code in all those programs 
> if it can all be stored in a shared library?


Answer: because it doesn't work.  :-(

I have been able to build a new gettext suite based on 0.11.2 and it 
passes the expected tests (and fails others for good and known reasons). 
  However, make install fails miserably -- because libtool (even 
20020502) has problems:

relinking. (2)

(1) *EVERY* time you do another 'make' invocation, libtool relinks the 
.exe's.  This is because 'make' is looking for foo.exe in <working dir>, 
but foo.exe is in <working dir>/.libs/.  The only thing in <working dir> 
is the libtool wrapper script, foo.  So, we relink. again and again and 
again... :-(

(2) When doing a 'make install', libtool insists on relinking the 
libraries.  But, it doesn't understand DESTDIR -- so even though I *HAD* 
a perfectly good 'cyggettextlib-0.11.2.dll' which depended on the new 
cygintl-2.dll -- the NEW relinked one gets linked against -L/usr/lib and 
picks up cygintl-1.dll.  (libtool thinks that libintl.la has already 
been installed into /usr/lib, and assumes that -L/usr/lib is the right 
thing to do.  But libintl.la was installed into $(DESTDIR)/usr/lib.)

IMO, this is a cross-platform libtool bug: libtool doesn't understand 
$(DESTDIR), and relinks against the wrong library.  (This of course begs 
the question: why is libtool relinking the DLLs?  There's no need to do 
that on windows; we have no -rpath.)

Rather than delay a release of gettext-0.11.2 and libiconv for Yet 
Another Round of Libtool Fixing, I'm going to go with Corinna's 
suggestion: just make libgettextlib and libgettextsrc static libs 
(libtool convenience libraries).  Nobody but gettext's own tools are 
allowed to use them anyway, so they might as well be.

The damage: the utility programs are, taken all together, a few hundred 
kb bigger than they would otherwise be.  Big **** deal.

--Chuck



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