Libtool 1.5 vs 2.2 (Was: Re: [PATCH] Remove dolt)

[Adrian Bunk]

On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 08:32:53AM -0400, Gaetan Nadon wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-09-20 at 15:35 +1000, Daniel Stone wrote:
> 
> > Today: Debian lenny (stable) _still_ shipping with 1.5.26
> 
> On a different, but related topic, xorg wiki documented lowest
> common denominator for libtool is v1.5. This is pretty old and reported
> as buggy. In real life, I speculate that v2.2 is used by all but a very
> few systems.
> 
> I accidentally discovered that when you create an m4 directory in a
> module,
> libtool 2.2 copies its macros in there and this is shipped in the
> tarball.
> When a tarball is built on a system at v1.5, it effectively uses v2.2
> anyway.
> 
> If all this is correct, I could not see any reason not to declare v2.2
> our
> minimum version. Using LT_INIT rather than AC_PROG_LIBTOOL would ensure
> v2.2 is used which would gives us the assurance that all tarballs are
> created
> at v2.2 rather than a (possible) mix bag of v1.5 and v2.2.

Maintaining a Linux platform that builds its components from git [1] 
that until half a year ago used libtool 1.5 I also ran into the problem 
that more and more components no longer work with libtool 1.5 (including 
several X components). My general impression at that time was that no 
upstream tests its code with libtool 1.5 anymore.

Also note that bumping the libtool requirement would affect only people
building from git, not normal users building from tarballs.

> Thanks
> 
> Gaetan

cu
Adrian

[1] http://linux.onarm.com

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed