new libtool re-builds libraries at install time?

Bill Gribble grib@linuxdevel.com
12 Nov 2001 21:36:12 -0600


On Mon, 2001-11-12 at 20:51, Derek Atkins wrote:
> I build gnucash.. It takes hours because libtool is SLOW at building
> libraries..  Then I try to "make install" and libtool proceeded to
> REBUILD all the libraries!!!
>
> Why is this?

That shouldn't be true if you got the ltmain.sh from CVS.  I think you
did, but you should check. On my machine, a 700 MHz Athlon, it takes 14
minutes to build and install gnucash from a make clean. If your build is
taking hours, my guess is that we aren't using the same libtool.  The
behavior you're seeing sounds most like the stock libtool 1.4.2
behavior, which is strange because you don't have libtool 1.4 installed,
do you?  and the ltmain.sh in CVS is not the stock 1.4.2 one. 

The ltmain.sh from CVS is 156412 bytes.  You have to re-configure to
build the libtool script. 

> Until this gets fixed, is there any way to revert back to libtool
> 1.3.5?

The Makefile.am are not compatible with libtool 1.3.5 any more, which is
one of the reasons we put the ltmain.sh into CVS.  Reverting would be a
fairly significant task.  If you are 100% sure that this is what's
causing your problems, we should talk about it, but I doubt it. 

A quick sanity check:  look at a generated .la file, say for example
src/app-file/libgncmod-app-file.la.  How big is that file overall, and
how long is the line that starts 'dependency_libs='?  With my CVS tree,
that file is about 3k, and dependency_libs is about 20 80-column lines
of text, and no duplicated libraries.  When we were seeing very long
libtool link times, there were very, very many repeated libraries, like
'-lm -lm -lm -lm -lm -lm -lm -lm -lm -lm -lm -lm -lm" and other such
nonsense.  

b.g.