[antlr-interest] antlr and libtool

[Ric Klaren]

Xavier Décoret wrote:
> I am trying to release a rpm of a library based on antlr but I am
> getting rpmbuild error with libantlr.a.  My library is using libtool and
> it seems libtool has problems with the libanltr.a that is produced by
> the standard ANTLR installation tarball. 

libtool might be looking for a .la file that it usually produces itself.
ANTLR's C++ support lib doesn't have it. There might be some option or
something to make libtool behave. Maybe you can work around it by
including the .a file on the link commandline directly e.g. use
<path-to-antlrlib>/libantlr.a in stead of -L<path-to-antlrlib> -lantlr

> This tarball uses the
> autoconf/automake approach but does not use libtool.  Is there any good
> reason for that?

We had a built once with libtool but it sucked (think I kicked it out
together with automake). Gave lots of trouble on solaris stripping off
necessary options during linking and such. It does (did?) not seem to
deal well with libraries in non standard paths. It's also not worth the
trouble. Linking the antlr lib is as straightforward as anything.

I don't recall why it was not included in the configure/makefile rework
by Wolfgang, though it might be that I made no libtool a requirement,
don't recall.

> Would antlr library (for c++,for linux) be produced one day with
> libtool? I am willing to do the packaging for that but I would need to
> get the original configure.in, Makefile.am etc. of the distrib and not
> the one currently downloadable.

Personally I'm not in a hurry to reintroduce libtool. If libtool can't
link a plain old .a file then it's just plain wrong.

Cheers,

Ric