Remove .la files
Goal description
In the past, we discovered quite a few RC bugs due to dependencies hidden in .la-files, or noticed that these .la files introduced unneeded dependencies. As they are usually not needed on Debian systems, we would like to remove them.
A longer explanation and the corresponding discussion can be found at http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/08/msg00783.html.
As dependency_libs mentions absolute paths, it'll break multiarch.
Current status
- Andreas Barth has created a script regularly scanning the archive for .la files.
The current output can be found on http://release.debian.org/~aba/la/current.txt.
List of user-tagged bug reports: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=la-file-removal;users=codehelp@debian.org
How to help
Emptying the dependency_libs field in .la files: sed -i "/dependency_libs/ s/'.*'/''/" `find . -name '*.la'`
Removal of the .la file if and only if all reverse dependencies don't list it anymore in the dependency_libs field of their .la file and the .la file is not used with libltdl as a plugin.
Next Milestones
- Empy dependency_libs fields in all .la files.
- Removal of all unneeded .la files.