(libtool14.info.gz) Postmortem

Info Catalog

(libtool14.info.gz) Other implementations

(libtool14.info.gz) Introduction

 
 1.4 A postmortem analysis of other implementations
 ==================================================
 
 In all fairness, each of the implementations that were examined do the
 job that they were intended to do, for a number of different host
 systems.  However, none of these solutions seem to function well as a
 generalized, reusable component.
 
    Most were too complex to use (much less modify) without understanding
 exactly what the implementation does, and they were generally not
 documented.
 
    The main difficulty is that different vendors have different views of
 what libraries are, and none of the packages which were examined seemed
 to be confident enough to settle on a single paradigm that just _works_.
 
    Ideally, libtool would be a standard that would be implemented as
 series of extensions and modifications to existing library systems to
 make them work consistently.  However, it is not an easy task to
 convince operating system developers to mend their evil ways, and
 people want to build shared libraries right now, even on buggy, broken,
 confused operating systems.
 
    For this reason, libtool was designed as an independent shell script.
 It isolates the problems and inconsistencies in library building that
 plague `Makefile' writers by wrapping the compiler suite on different
 platforms with a consistent, powerful interface.
 
    With luck, libtool will be useful to and used by the GNU community,
 and that the lessons that were learned in writing it will be taken up by
 designers of future library systems.
 

Info Catalog

(libtool14.info.gz) Other implementations

(libtool14.info.gz) Introduction