Bug#731864: libgeographiclib-dev: /usr/lib/libGeographic.a should be compiled with -fPIC compiler option

[larzeni]

Package: libgeographiclib-dev
Version: 1.21-1
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

I war trying to build a shared library that uses some coordinates conversion routines implemented by geographic lib.
I need to distribute my shared library (it will be used by a python application).
I would not like my application to depend on package libgeographic (that is, I would like to avoid that the user needs to install or copy /usr/lib/libGeographic.so.9 in it's system)

For these reasons I need to embed in my library the object code that is in libGeographic.a

But while doing this, the compiler complains that:

/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.7/../../../../lib/libGeographic.a(MGRS.o): relocation R_X86_64_32S against `_ZTVN13GeographicLib13GeographicErrE' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC

This happens (in my understanding) because the MGRS.o was compiled from MGRS.cpp without passing the -fPIC option to the compiler.

So, please consider adding this option to your compiler build; without this option, the libGeographic.a can be used only to build self-contained executables and not self-contained libraries, that are preferred/needed when you are trying to integrate the library in a cpython environment (in my case I was trying to deliver a QGIS plugin).

Thanks, larzeni

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.2
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages libgeographiclib-dev depends on:
ii  libgeographiclib9  1.21-1

libgeographiclib-dev recommends no packages.

libgeographiclib-dev suggests no packages.

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