Re: [XForms] static fdesign?

[Michal Szymanski]

On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 04:08:05PM +0100, Jens Thoms Toerring wrote:
> Hi Michal,
> 
> On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 01:20:26PM +0100, Michal Szymanski wrote:
> > I am just about to upgrade my system-wide XForms to latest version
> > (1.0.92sp2). Checking the design/building of my apps with the newer
> > version would be probably easier if fdesign was statically linked with
> > libforms.a. I know that there is a fdesign script in source directory
> > which arranges for the proper dynamic library to be loaded but still I
> > think it might be worth considering changing the Makefiles (or, maybe,
> > adding an option to configure) to build 'fdesign' binary which would be
> > self-consistent with the XForms version it was built in.
> 
> Do you think that this problem will go away once we have
> correct version numbers for the library? If that has been
> addressed I would think there's no ambiguity left in fdesign
> which version it has to pick and statically linking doesn't
> seem to be necessary anymore.

Actually there is no particular problem with version numbering. What I
was thinking of was just making 'fdesign' independent of the version of
XForms that is actually installed in the system. When you are trying to
check old apps with the new version of library, it is good to be able
to do this (easily) *before* the new library is actually *installed*.
With the application build it is easy - just by linking it with static
versions of libraries. With the new 'fdesign', however, it would require
setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the new dynamic libraries. Surely it is
doable but one has to remember to set it properly, otherwise one can
inadvertently use the new binary with old dynamic libraries.

Actually, I have just checked that one can get statically linked
'fdesign' by adding "--disable-shared" option to "configure" (save it
and then recompile the whole thing without this option do get the dynamic
libraries made). So, maybe it is not worth changing the Makefiles etc.
I do not insist :)

regards, Michal.
-- 
  Michal Szymanski (msz at astrouw dot edu dot pl)
  Warsaw University Observatory, Warszawa, POLAND