compile error on 2.1.2: library libltdl/libltdlc.la

[Alan DeKok]

John Dennis wrote:
> O.K. I give up. I've begun to truly despise libtool. There are too many
> layers, obsurcifications, and poorly documented configuration options to
> wrap my poor little brain around.

  The libtool people must be *much* smarter than me, because I don't
understand the code.

  My inclination at this point is to remove libltld entirely from the
build.  If your system doesn't have a functional dlopen(), it doesn't
deserve to run FreeRADIUS.

> I figured out that the reason why INSTALL_LTDL was never defined is
> because it's defined deep inside the code which only gets turned on when
> --with-system-libtool is not specified.
> 
> However if one removes this option then linking fails because libtool
> cannot find libltdl/libltdlc.la in the root of the build tree.

  What the heck is libltdlc.la?  I don't see it on my system when the
server is being built.

> With the prior release (2.1.1) if I didn't define --with-system-libtool
> then I would get an unresolved reference to
> lt__PROGRAM__LTX_preloaded_symbols and I was told by our libtool
> maintainer this is due to incompatibilities with the files included in
> the tarball and the right solution is to specify --with-system-libtool
> so that local files are used but if I do that then it barfs on
> INSTALL_LTDL :-(
> 
> Googling all of this did not provide much help other than discovering
> I'm not the only who thinks libtool is too hard to use. If anyone truly
> understands this stuff I'd love an explanation.

  libtool, libltdl, and autoconf are steaming masses of fertilizer.

  When FreeRADIUS started, I took a look at automake, and decided it was
truly pointless.  So we used gmake, and no one has ever really complained.

  If you look at the source code, there are a few references to
WITHOUT_LIBLTLDL.  It still requires some finalization, but it's been
known to work (after some edits) on some systems.  I might just spend
some time removing ltldl from the system entirely.

  Alan DeKok.