Niels Möller writes ("Re: Bug#415034: chiark-utils FTBFS -- who is to blame?"):
> Just a detail: The dependence on gmp is not merely an implementation
> detail, it's part of the interface (the public nettle functions use
> gmp's mpz_t for passing around bignums).
Right, but ...
> Do the chiark programs use the public-key parts of nettle?
... no.
> The reason I ("upstream") recommend that applications using nettle
> link explicitly with -lnettle -lgmp, is that that seems to be the
> easiest portable way to get correct linking, across various systems,
> and with both dynamic and static linking. Debian priorities may well
> be different, since you always use dynamic linking and ELF.
Indeed.
> I consider it a bug that programs that aren't using gmp-dependent
> functions of nettle still must to link with gmp at runtime (assuming
> that nettle was configured with public key support, and dynamic
> linking is used; this worked better with static linking). A future
> version of nettle will split the library into two files, one that
> depends on gmp, and one that does not.
Right.
Ian.
