Re: [PATCH] Makefile: Change library order for static linking

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 22, 2015, 21:30 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqlhby16sh.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20150922203759.GB9793@cruxbox>

Remi Pommarel <repk@triplefau.lt> writes:

> I have one last question thought. Wouldn't it be nice if we had
> configure to autodetect the need for -lssl with libcurl?

Sure.  I do not think anybody tried, but it would be nice.

Show 11 quoted lines

> We could make
> configure to check for Curl_ssl_init function symbol in libcurl,
> which is only present if libcurl has been compiled with openssl support,
> by adding something like that in configure.ac:
>
> AC_CHECK_LIB([curl], [Curl_ssl_init],
> 	[NEEDS_SSL_WITH_CURL=YesPlease],
> 	[NEEDS_SSL_WITH_CURL=])
>
> The thing that I'm afraid of is that checking a function that is not part
> of official libcurl API could be not very reliable, don't you think ?

That is true.

To be bluntly honest, use of autoconf (and configure generated by it) in this project is optional, so I would not worry too much if you misidentify a version of cURL that does not need -lssl as needing one (or vice versa). As long as other parts of the resulting ./configure keeps working (read: emitting a syntactically broken shell script is not an OK offence) and if there is a way to work around the result of misidentification made by ./configure (read: config.mak can cure all gotchas made by config.mak.autogen), it would be fine to use something like the above snippet you gave us as the starting point and it will help some positive number of people. We have to start from somewhere if we want to get there.

People who find versions of libcURL that gets misidentified will send in fixes if it matters to them.

Thanks.