libtool: Introduction

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1 1 Introduction
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1 In the past, if you were a source code package developer and wanted to
1 take advantage of the power of shared libraries, you needed to write
1 custom support code for each platform on which your package ran.  You
1 also had to design a configuration interface so that the package
1 installer could choose what sort of libraries were built.
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1    GNU Libtool simplifies your job by encapsulating both the
1 platform-specific dependencies, and the user interface, in a single
1 script.  GNU Libtool is designed so that the complete functionality of
1 each host type is available via a generic interface, but nasty quirks
1 are hidden from the programmer.
1 
1    GNU Libtool's consistent interface is reassuring... users don't need
1 to read obscure documentation to have their favorite source package
1 build shared libraries.  They just run your package 'configure' script
1 (or equivalent), and libtool does all the dirty work.
1 
1    There are several examples throughout this document.  All assume the
1 same environment: we want to build a library, 'libhello', in a generic
1 way.
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1    'libhello' could be a shared library, a static library, or both...
1 whatever is available on the host system, as long as libtool has been
1 ported to it.
1 
1    This chapter explains the original design philosophy of libtool.
1 Feel free to skip to the next chapter, unless you are interested in
1 history, or want to write code to extend libtool in a consistent way.
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Menu

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· Motivation                  Why does GNU need a libtool?
· Issues                      The problems that need to be addressed.
· Other implementations       How other people have solved these issues.
· Postmortem                  Learning from past difficulties.
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