Bug 287318

Summary:	track *.la dependencies
Product:	Portage Development	Reporter:	Sven <sven.koehler>
Component:	Enhancement/Feature Requests	Assignee:	Portage team <dev-portage>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	normal	CC:	dschridde+gentoobugs, esigra, Martin.vGagern, pacho, steffen
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---
Bug Depends on:	271129
Bug Blocks:	240323

Description Sven 2009-10-02 08:47:48 UTC

Hi,

portage already knows about the dependencies between *.so files.
Yet, it doesn't do the same with *.la files (and the *.a files that belong to them).

As a motivation, I want to describe the problem, that I had yesterday:

As part of the xorg-x11 upgrade (stable amd64) a new libxcb was installed. The new version came without a libxcb-xlib.la and libxcb-xlib.a.
The xorg-upgrade failed at some point. libXaw didn't compile because libtool was missing libxcb-xlib.la which was still references in some other .la files.

Now emerge @preserved-rebuild wasn't a big help. It obviously had no idea, that there were plenty of broken *.la files on my system due to the removal of libxcb-xlib.la.
revdep-rebuild wasn't a big help either. It noticed that there were many broken *.la files, but it didn't handle the fact, that libxcb-xlib.so was being preserved by portage.

Sure, revdep-rebuild could be fixed (is there a new version that handles preserved libraries?), but on the other hand, portage might also handle *.la files.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1 Zac Medico gentoo-dev

2011-07-10 15:04:21 UTC

(In reply to comment #0)
> The xorg-upgrade failed at some point. libXaw didn't compile because libtool
> was missing libxcb-xlib.la which was still references in some other .la files.

In cases like this, a command like `emerge --oneshot --complete-graph $(grep -l libxcb-xlib.la /usr/lib/*.la)` typically helps fix up the breakage. In the long term, many cases like libxcb-xlib.la will gradually resolve themselves since once the files are removed they never come back and therefore they won't cause any more trouble. FEATURES=fixlafiles also helps avoid problems with removed *.la files.

Comment 2 Pacho Ramos gentoo-dev

2012-06-24 20:47:06 UTC

Also, there was a plan to drop .la files by default on upcoming EAPI bumps:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357561

but I have not idea about how that it ended finally :/