[Pkg-openldap-devel] Serious error in the packaging of OpenLDAP 2.3

[Steve Langasek]

On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 05:46:56PM -0800, Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:
> >On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 02:22:32PM -0800, Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:
> >>Although Debian changed OpenLDAP 2.3 to build things modularly, the
> >>slapd  package that is built does not appear to contain the *.la files,
> >>making it  impossible for end users to actually load the modules.  This
> >>needs to be  fixed before this is a useful package.

> >Have you tested this?  .la files should not be required for loading
> >anything; and I think if it were impossible to load any of the backends,
> >we would have heard about it by now.

> Using the .la files is the documented and supported method for loading the 
> backends.  If debian is going to choose to not ship them, then debian needs 
> to (a) note this major modification in behavior, and (b) update all the 
> related man pages and other documentation.  I think it makes a lot more 
> sense to support the documented behavior.

Hmm.  Well, the .la files were dropped for a reason -- I just can't remember
now what the precise reason was, and there's little detail in the changelog.
Stephen, do you remember why this was done, and what problems reverting this
change might cause?

At a guess, the reason was the stupidity of .la files hard-coding a list of
indirect library dependencies which would shift underneath the package and
break loading with libltdl; but I'm honestly not sure if this was ever a
problem with libltdl.

FWIW, I only find one reference to the .la extension in all of the manpages
installed by the slapd package (slapo-dynlist.5), so updating the
documentation doesn't seem like an undue obstacle here.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon at debian.org                                   http://www.debian.org/