Get rid of libtool? [was Re: Makefile problems]

[Bryce McKinlay <bryce at waitaki dot otago dot ac dot nz>]

Nic Ferrier wrote:

>I'm sorry about that. It seems to the fault of my patch.
>
>I did do a full test (configure, build and install) of the patch on a
>fresh check out (with the diff applied). I'm not sure why that didn't
>catch the problem.
>

It is a dependency problem - ie if you touch a source file it will cause 
everything to be rebuilt rather than just the other files which depend 
on what you changed.

I must admit that, after a frustrating afternoon yesterday trying to 
figure out silly libjava build problems when I really wanted to do 
productive gcj hacking, I am sympathetic to RTH's recent suggestion that 
we get rid of libtool (and automake?) and instead make sure that "gcc 
-shared" knows how to build a shared library on all the platforms that 
we care about.

I am convinced that this would result in a much more maintainable, 
transparent, and above all _fast_ build system, in addition to making it 
easier to implement libjava-specific requirements like package-at-a-time 
compilation.

So, is there anything important that we would lose from such a change? 
Is there anything that libtool can do that GCC will never be able to do? 
What platforms do we care about that GCC currently cant build a shared 
library on (windows perhaps?).

regards

Bryce.