Why is libfoo.la is installed?

[Alexandre Oliva]

H J Lu writes:

> libtool installs libfoo.la along with libfoo.so and libfoo.a. As the
> result, there are libbfd.la and libopcodes.la when "make install"
> is done on binutils. Is there a particular reason to install libfoo.la?

Certainly.  Suppose libfoo is a library provided by your package.
Wouldn't you like other packages that build upon your library to get
correct library dependencies and run-time paths?  These are stored in
the .la file, so it should be installed, so that libtool can use it
later.  AFAIK, it currently doesn't such files from other packages,
but I believe it's intended to support this in the future.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva
mailto:oliva@dcc.unicamp.br mailto:aoliva@acm.org
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva
Universidade Estadual de Campinas, SP, Brasil