On Sun, 2021-01-10 at 14:54 +0100, Fabian Groffen wrote: > On 10-01-2021 14:34:13 +0100, Michał Górny wrote: > > The vast majority of libtool-based programs use configure script to > > generate libtool. However, a few non-autoconf packages also use libtool > > by calling system-installed /usr/bin/libtool. The problem is that this > > libtool hardcodes the values of CC/CXX at its' build time, so unless it > > is rebuilt frequently, packages end up using the stale values. > > The problem is known since 2005 [1] and hasn't been resolved yet. > > > > I can think of two ways of solving it: > > > > 1. We could patch system-installed libtool to respect environment > > variables such as CC, CXX, etc. This will probably require carrying > > a (possibly non-trivial) patch forever. On the bright side, libtool is > > not exactly a package seeing frequent releases. I mean, the current > > version is from 2015. > > > > 2. We could regenerate libtool and force local instance of libtool > > in the packages needing it. The main advantage of this is that it's > > a no-brainer. I could make a quick eclass that does configure a local > > instance and prepends it into PATH. > > > > WDYT? > > I would prefer option 2, also because on some systems usr/bin/libtool is > some entirely different tool than GNU libtool. > > I remember this being much more of a problem ~15 years ago, so I wonder > do we have an easy way of crafting a list of affected packages, such > that we can see how big the problem actually is nowadays? I'm thinking > perhaps tinderbox logs or something can reveal /usr/bin/libtool usage > somehow.
I think it might be possible to do something akin USE=-native-symlinks that makes libtool not install /usr/bin/libtool, and see what breaks. However, I'm not sure if this executable isn't required for some obscure reason anyway. -- Best regards, Michał Górny
