libtool vs. libtool-devel

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 7, 2008, at 18:51, skip at pobox.com wrote:

> I was seduced by the libtool-devel port (v. 1.9f), which caused me to
> deactivate the libtool port (v 1.5.24) in favor of it.  As it turns  
> out, the
> automake folks told me 1.9f is pretty old.

libtool-devel is unmaintained so it wouldn't surprise me if it's out  
of date. As all unmaintained ports, it's open for adoption.

> The other kicker which got me to try libtool-devel was that the  
> libtool port
> doesn't actually install tools named "libtool" and "libtoolize".  I  
> was
> looking for libtoolize, so assumed without investigating that if  
> 1.9 > 1.5
> and 1.5 doesn't have libtoolize, maybe 1.9 would have it.

According to "port contents libtool", it installs glibtool and  
glibtoolize, not libtool and libtoolize, because that would conflict  
with Apple's libtool, which is not the same as GNU libtool and should  
therefore not be replaced with GNU libtool. libtool-devel also uses  
the "g" prefix.

> Given the naive view that a larger version number implies something  
> a bit
> more current and "-devel" implies something a bit more development- 
> oriented,
> shouldn't the libtool-devel port either be renamed or deleted  
> altogether?

The "-devel" suffix indicates a development (non-production-quality,  
pre-release) version of a port, according to the definition of the  
developer of the software.

To what would you suggest the port name be changed? I think the name  
"libtool-devel" is accurate, since the port does install a  
development version of libtool.

It can be deleted, but presumably the better course of action would  
be to update it to the latest development version of libtool.  
Although, according to http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/, 1.9f is  
the latest development version, though it is over 3 years old. I  
guess the 2.1a version is newer, but they seem to be releasing daily  
new versions of 2.1a, which isn't helpful.