Joseph Kowalski wrote: > > I've never encountered libtool so I no have expertise. However, seems > many have had such experience and it seems that the common experience > was not a pleasant one. > > The only justification I can find in the mail trail is that some > developers need it (or perhaps only to use to port legacy applications), > and nobody should actually use it for something new.
While there seems to be a lot of antipathy to libtool, even its detractors are conceding that it is required by some internal teams (JDS, X11) and most likely by a number of external developers. > I makes me wonder if we've gone too far with the "linux'ism" of > Solaris. Sure, we probably need to provide access to such things (such > as libtool), but do we need to place everything in /usr/bin? > > It kinda sounds like /usr/sfw/bin :-) , but let's not go there (yet). > > I know we have wanted to purge all the objects from /usr/sfw. That's > because the semantic was "no accidental discovery" or "not > committed/stable". > The semantic I was looking for was something closer to "legacy" or > "anachronistic" - something which is only used as a dependency; build or > otherwise. > > If this *concept* has merit, then we can discuss if this should be > /usr/sfw (re-use) or create a new place. > > Then again, if there are only a handful of such objects, then its not > worth the effort and we should stay with "toxic" warning. There has been much discussion (in the /usr/gnu case and elsewhere) about whether it's acceptable or desirable to keep putting new executables in /usr/bin. AFAIK, /usr/bin is still the best location. I'm not interested in proposing a new location with this case - /usr/legacy/bin, /usr/has/bin (or don't forget /usr/dust/bin). > I also wonder if libtool should also be labeled as "obsolescent" (in SAC > parlance). I think the Obsolete modifier could be a good suggestion. So, that would change the interfaces to "Uncommitted (Obsolete)" and would mean the binding needs to change to "Micro", as Obsolete is not allowed for Patch binding. - Dermot
