[tex-live] Unneeded linking in mf and xdvi-xaw?

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Mon Jun 22 02:48:07 CEST 2009


    our Debian tools complain that mf and xdvi-xaw are linked against
    libXext, libSM and libICE, although the don't use any symbols from them.

Easy to believe.  When I originally wrote the AC_PATH_XTRA macro 20 or
so years ago, they were definitely needed with the new X11R6 on the Sun
3 or whatever I was using.  (And these new libraries were a huge pain to
deal with.)

Like Stefan, I worry that they are still needed on some systems.  I
don't know how to tell the difference, either, to improve the Autoconf
macro.

There was no obvious reason why they were needed in the first place, it
seemed like the X people just created these new libraries in accordance
with their development thinking at the time, and they were basically
always needed.  My recollection is that everything failed to link due to
IceConnectionNumber being unresolved, and -lSM was needed because of
-lICE.  -lXext was for other stuff that the Athena widgets needed, or
something?  Of course at this point the details are very fuzzy in what
passes for my brain.

All in all, a big pain and there doesn't seem to be any way forward
without loads and loads of research and testing.  Sigh.

karl


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