[Plplot-devel] Re: [Plplot-cvs] CVS update notice (plplot)

[Alan W. I. <ai...@us...>]

On 2003-10-15 17:05-0700 Rafael Laboissiere wrote:

> Update of /cvsroot/plplot/plplot
> In directory sc8-pr-cvs1:/tmp/cvs-serv21349
>
> Modified Files:
> 	Makefile.am configure.ac
> Log Message:
> Allow use of installed libltdl
>
> A Debian fellow pointed out to me that there is no need to compile the
> libltdl support when building the PLplot Debian packages, since there is a
> libltdl3 package against which libplplot can be linked.
>
> In order to be able to disable configuration/compilation of the libltdl
> support, I did the following changes:
>
>     * In configure.ac, AC_LIBTOOL_CONVENIENCE and AC_LIBTOOL_INSTALLABLE are
>       called conditionally on the presence of an installed libltdl (using
>       AC_CHECK_LIB).
>
>     * In order to avoid config/build of the libltdl directory,
>       AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS(libltdl) is called conditionally as well.  Also, in
>       Makefile.am, the libltdl directory is included conditionally on the
>       (newly created) AM_CONDITIONAL variable enable_ltdl_convenience.
>       [N.B.: I changed the code for setting the SUBDIRS variable in
>       Makefile.am using the automake append (+=) operator, instead of using
>       the auxiliary variable drivers_src_dirs as before.]
>
> If the user has libltdl installed in the system but wants to use the version
> shipped with PLplot, she can override the configure check by giving the
> --enable-ltdl-convenience option (this needs further tests, though).
>
> The advantage of using the system's libltdl are:
>
>     * Configuration time is reduced, since the libltdl dir does not need to
>       be configured.
>     * Build time is also reduced, for a similar reason.
>     * The size of the resulting libplplot library is around 10% smaller (at
>       least in Linux).

I am quite uneasy about this.  Our experience is the autotools results
depend critically on having consistent versions.  A system libltdl loses
that critical version consistency, and I expect it is going to cause us
trouble.  So please change your options around so the default is to use the
standard tested convenience library approach with the user having to
specifically ask for the experimental option --enable-ltdl-system, if they
want to take a chance on it.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org), the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net), the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net), and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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