Re: [boost] Boost and pkg-config support

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost and pkg-config support
From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-03-01 03:08:14

On Tuesday, March 01, 2011 10:52:35 Steve M. Robbins wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 01, 2011 at 10:17:36AM +0300, Vladimir Prus wrote:
> > Could you brief me on what's --as-needed, why is it needed, and why
> > does it break a perfect model of "I link to shared library foo, and
> > whatever dependecies are used automatically".
> 
> The rationale (from http://wiki.debian.org/ToolChain/DSOLinking)
> is to detect situations where
> 
>     your executable links against a library A which links against
>     library B, but your executable needs symbols in library B. This is
>     problematic in the situation where library A removes its
>     dependency to library B. The next time the executable gets rebuild
>     it will break and cannot be linked.

<sarcasm>Oh, welcome to this new world where linking on Unix works just line in Windows</sarcasm>

Seriously, though:

1. It appears --as-needed has nothing to do with this issue. It is
--no-copy-dt-needed-entries that breaks things.

2. I agree that pkg-config is the only possible solution.

3. I am not much of pkg-config expert; and Boost.Build's interpreted language
is really not much harder than any of other languages present on Unix.
So, the fastest way for this to be fixed is for me to sketch up Boost.Build
code and then have somebody fill in the blanks and actually test it.

- Volodya