On Tue, 12 Feb 2002, Klaus Heinz wrote:

: pkgsrc/Packages.txt mentions 'libtool' in chapter 6.2. My understanding
: of 'libtool' has been in the direction 'abstraction of shared library
: creation on _different_ platforms' but the text in Packages.txt
: seems to consider the NetBSD ports as different platforms.

NetBSD *is* different between different ports for many reasons:

* different accepted link-time flags (older a.out only accepts "ld -Bshareable"
  whereas ELF and newer a.out uses "cc -shared")

* different way of handling libraries for ELF vs. a.out (ELF needs a -soname
  and may need -export-dynamic for some programs; a.out doesn't accept
  either of these options at all)

Essentially, these differences make for different platforms, and something
has to cope with it (even on packages that "just work" on *some* NetBSD
platforms/versions).  A while back, it was decided that libtool was the most
mature solution available at the time to do this.

Also, pkgsrc is used on more than just NetBSD....

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