Re: automatic link specification

[John V. Shahid]

>Thank you very much for your answer, this autolinking may be wasn't a
>great idea after all.
 
Dude, I've been watching this conversation for a while . The idea isn't
bad as it seems, but I think this is what package managers where built
for (i.e. RPM). By handing your friend the *script* that you wrote (and
cross-compiled for her architecture) as a RPM-package, the package
manager should be able to figure out the missing package and report an
informative error. A compiled ELF object file will also contain the name
of the library file needed to run the executable (i.e.
boost_filesystem.so). Although the library name might be cryptic to some
users, it will help in a Google search. 

Another way to take care of this problem is to use Autoconf. This way
you can check for the existence of a library in the *configure* script
and report an informative error to the user. This will make you able to
ex-change the source code, instead of a compiled package or ELF object
file.

Another reason why this might be a bad idea is that the information
regarding linking and compilation will be distributed among the project
files, which will get really messy for large projects. Instead, the
current approach of the Makefiles will make management a better
experience.

Cheers,
-- 
John V. Shahid <jvshahid@gmail.com>