Re: Gnome-Slackware-Howto

[Adam Moyes <adam macfar demon co uk>]

J Webb wrote:
> 
> Adam,
> 
> Thanks for your input on my HOWTO. Was your comment about /etc/magic
> concerning libdb? It seems to me that, for instance when doing make
> install on gnome-libs it will segfault because it doesn't know what to
> do with libdb. Are you saying that libdb doesn't link right or what? Any
> idea how to fix this problem that you describe? Let me know.
> 
No, this is to do with the output of the ``file'' command. It uses the
/etc/magic file to identify the type of a file and prints the message
indicated in matching entry of the /etc/magic file.

The Slackware distribution that I had (pretty old - about 1.5 years now)
had the entry (for ELF objects):
>>16    leshort         3               dynamic library
- or something similar (with dynamic in it)

The problem is, when the Makefiles produced by configure link an executable,
they use ``libtool'' a generated shell script that checks for shared
versions of libraries in preference to static ones. it does this by looking
for ``shared object'' in the output of the file command on the required
libraries. But as you can probably guess by now, the slackware distribution
caused ``dynamic lib'' to be output and this was not recognised, making
everything link staticly. I therefore changed the line in my /etc/magic file
to the following (but before you put this in the FAQ, read bellow):

>>16    leshort         3               shared object

On producing this e-mail, I checked the libtool generated with the latest
control-center and found that it now checks for ``dynamic lib...'' as well,
so it looks like my change is now not required.

Adam.

-- 
Hofstadter's Law:
        It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
Hofstadter's Law into account.