[114693] trunk/dports/sysutils/macportsscripts/Portfile

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Dec 13, 2013, at 21:14, Craig Treleaven wrote:

> I gave the new version of port-depcheck.sh a try...with VLC, see following.  Very different results from the prior version.  As I've said, I'm not a C/C++ developer--the prior version reported a bunch of false positives due to "over-linking"?  In layman's terms, what's that?

Example:

php55 links with a library from the libxml2 port (libxml2.dylib)
libxml2 links with a library from the xz port (liblzma.dylib)

Under MacPorts 2.1.x and earlier, php55 might be linked to liblzma.dylib also, just because libxml2 is linked with it, even though php55 does not itself use liblzma. I don’t happen to have a MacPorts 2.1 installation handy anymore so I don’t know if these specific ports were actually affected by this issue, but this is the general principle of what we call overlinking.

We fixed the problem in MacPorts 2.2 by clearing the dependency_libs line of .la files as they’re installed, or as of Mavericks by deleting the .la files entirely, but you will not be completely rid of overlinking in all ports you have installed until some distant future time when all ports have coincidentally been updated to newer versions in the right order, or until you uninstall and reinstall all ports from source. (Installing from a binary might get you an overlinked binary from our packages server.)