Queries regarding packaging of static libraries

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 03:28:01PM +0530, Ankur Sinha wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm working on packaging required software to add to the fedora medical
> initiative. 
> 
> Of late, I've come across quite a few *tiny* libraries which are build
> deps for the software. The issue with most of these are that they only
> provide static libraries. These are generally libraries used by
> universities in research. 
> 
> I've already submitted two of them for review:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=714326
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=714327
> 
> and now, I've come across two more:
> 
> http://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/sparse/UFconfig/UFconfig-3.6.1.tar.gz
> http://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/sparse/amd/AMD-2.2.2.tar.gz
> 
> All the software that require these maintain a bundled version. I wanted
> to know if I need to package these, (without any shared libs), or should
> I just let the bundled versions remain as internal libraries? 
> 
> Someone at #fedora-devel suggested I patch the Makefiles to generate the
> shared objects. I'm not sure if it's okay to provide shared objects
> while upstream only provides static libs. This will also increase the
> work required in packaging since all the Makefiles will need to be
> heavily patched.  
> 
> I'd like to know what the correct and efficient way to proceed here is. 

The correct way is to patch the Makefiles so they can build shared
libraries, to send those patches upstream, and to unbundle any bundled
libraries.  It's quite a bit of work, but if upstream accept your
patches then hopefully it's only a one-off piece of work.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
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