Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> writes:
> It bothers me that we don't even *know* the dependancies or even why
> they're there. Those autoconf lines have been there ever since autoconf
> use was started. They were added with only the comment "detect these
> libraries". If -lnsl or -lresolv is needed for gethostbyname() on some
> platform then it should check that that function is actually in that
> library before pulling it in, rather than pulling it unconditionally.
I have no problem with trying to make configure more selective about
which libraries we need at all. That's an orthogonal problem from
what the backend makefile should try to filter out, though. With
respect to system libraries, I would think that the backend needs
everything we need at all --- certainly everything to do with
networking. Threading support and readline are the only things
I can see that are reasonable to omit from the backend link (and
we already take care of the threading bit I believe).
regards, tom lane
