Maybe we can take a step back here and ask: why is this such a problem? The guidelines are quite moderate in their tone. They say: "Packages including libraries should exclude static libs as far as possible (eg by configuring with --disable-static). Static libraries should only be included in exceptional circumstances. Applications linking against libraries should as far as possible link against shared libraries not static versions. [...] In general, packagers are strongly encouraged not to ship static libs unless a compelling reason exists." However the tone of this thread is extreme. Any *.a file must apparently never appear anywhere outside a *-static package, no matter what, even if it's been like this forever (eg. libgcc.a, libiberty, etc) or even if it's not causing a problem for anyone (OCaml code). This isn't even about static code specifically, because no one's talking about static copies of inline code from header files, which is just as well because C uses that all over the place, and C++ even more so, and none of that is confined to -static packages, far from it. If there's an actual problem that we're solving, let's hear about that. Rich. PS. On the separate subject of OCaml packages, the whole pkg / pkg-devel split doesn't suit OCaml code at all, and is at best a hack to make OCaml packages look a bit like C libraries. Given the choice and lots of spare time we'd use a radically different naming system. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines. Supports shell scripting, bindings from many languages. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/ See what it can do: http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/recipes.html -- packaging mailing list packaging@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/packaging
