RFC: static / dynamic linking in samba3

[Michael Adam]

I have just started to revise the s3-linking of internal subsystems
as static vs. shared libraries.

As a first step, I have cleaned the SMB_LIBRARY mechanism so that
I could remove the @LIBFOO_STATIC@ stuff from the object
collections. (branches master / v3-4-test)
This was based on a patch found in the debian packaging code.

There are a few items that are on my list next:

* I would like to unify the use of external libs:
  Therefore I would like to rename the configure parameter
  "--with-wbclient" to "--enable-external-libwbclient"
  to be consistent with "--enable-external-talloc".

  Any objections?

* I would also like to (re-)unify the configuration of libwbclient
  with the other libs (libtalloc, libtdb, libnetapi, ...) to be
  configured with SMB_LIBRARY().
  This means that it will also be possible again to build and link
  libwbclient statically, removing the restriction imposed when
  libsmbclient was originally created that it should only be
  possible to build/link libwbclient statically with
  --enable-develper. I think this is artificial. Sometimes you just
  want to link a library statically. Vendors are patching the sources
  to allow for building and linking statically anyways.

* Finally, I would come up with a linking scheme that copes
  better with the fact that our libraries like libtalloc start to
  appear as sytem libraries in the distributions (maybe triggered
  by our introduction of building libtalloc and friends shared in
  Samba 3.2).

  A scheme for building (that is basically also what samba4 does)
  initially discussed with Jelmer and Lars (among others)
  on irc could be the following:

  - check wheter libfoo is in the system
    and check whether it suits our version requirements
    (current checks use pkg-config for this)

  - if libfoo is available and version is ok, then
    adapt compile / link flags according to pkg-config to
    link against that library

  - if either the library is not found or version is not ok,
    then build libfoo internally and link it in _statically_

  This would be the scheme for very isolated libraries like
  libtalloc, libtdb.

  Other, more samba-specific subsystems that won't find their
  way into distributions any time soon could still be built and
  linked dynamically internally.

Folks, I would like to hear your comments on the suggestions above.

Cheers - Michael

-- 
Michael Adam <ma at sernet.de>  <obnox at samba.org>
SerNet GmbH, Bahnhofsallee 1b, 37081 Göttingen
phone: +49-551-370000-0, fax: +49-551-370000-9
AG Göttingen, HRB 2816, GF: Dr. Johannes Loxen
http://www.SerNet.DE, mailto: Info @ SerNet.DE
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