[OpenAFS-devel] Why I like libtool

[Russ Allbery]

Jim Rees <rees@umich.edu> writes:

> I wouldn't say that isn't a problem.  Right now I can run regen.sh to
> make a configure script that can be bundles into a tarball and used on
> any system.  I don't think that's the case with libtool.  As far as I
> can tell, and correct me if I'm wrong, libtool needs to be built for
> each platform.  And because it's GPL, we can't ship it with our source
> tarballs.

Nope.  libtool's a giant shell script and some Autoconf macros; there's
nothing that has to be built.  The header of the giant shell script says:

# Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001
# Free Software Foundation, Inc.
# Originally by Gordon Matzigkeit <gord@gnu.ai.mit.edu>, 1996
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
# General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
#
# As a special exception to the GNU General Public License, if you
# distribute this file as part of a program that contains a
# configuration script generated by Autoconf, you may include it under
# the same distribution terms that you use for the rest of that program.

If you build libtool yourself, it does compile some stuff, but that's for
the libtldl support library, something that OpenAFS doesn't need.  You can
still ship with the tarball everything needed to build it, without any
licensing concerns.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>