Bug#621640: libgtkdatabox: Getting rid of unneeded *.la / emptying dependency_libs

[codehelp at debian.org]

Package: libgtkdatabox
Severity: normal
User: codehelp at debian.org
Usertags: la-file-removal

To finish an old release goal from Squeeze, to comply with Policy
10.2 and to ease the introduction of MultiArch, I'm filing bugs
against packages which contain .la files which can be either removed
or stripped of the dependency_libs variable.

http://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/LAFileRemoval

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/04/msg00055.html

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/04/msg00199.html

Data has been obtained from the output of an automated script:

http://release.debian.org/~aba/la/current.txt

The output is best read in conjunction with the criteria from this
post to debian-devel:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/08/msg00808.html

To generate the list of packages, I've used:

grep -v depended-on current.txt |cut -d: -f1

The data is regularly updated but please accept my apologies if you
have made an upload which changes the situation since the data was
parsed.

libgtkdatabox appears in this list as a source package because one or
more of the binary packages (usually -dev packages) contain .la
files.

In most cases, the .la file(s) can simply be removed as the process
behind this MBF has already identified that there are no further
dependencies using the .la file. In the unusual case that your
package uses libltdl directly, it is still necessary to empty the
dependency_libs part of all .la files remaining in the package. Once
libgtkdatabox is fixed, the process will repeat and other packages
which you maintain may need to be fixed in turn. It is important that
packages are fixed in sequence to avoid FTBFS bugs.

If you believe that your package needs both the .la file and the
dependency_libs settings, please raise this on debian-devel for
clarification.
-- 

Neil Williams
=============
codehelp at debian.org
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/