[Expat-discuss] newbie question: I want libexpat.a but it's building libexpat.la

[Dan Nicholson]

On Feb 2, 2008 10:34 AM, Kevin's Hobbies - www.scale18.com
<sales at scale18.com> wrote:
> I am trying to build "libexpat.a" on a iMac with System X10.3.9, when I
> run "./configure --disable-shared --enable-static" and then run "make"
> it generates "libexpat.la", all the other packages that I am using
> generate "libxxx.a", and I don't know what a ".la" is.
>
> I'm using g++ to generate my program, is there a way to use the ".la"
> file with it or do I need to somehow convert it to a ".a" file?

There is a static library, libexpat.a, it's just hidden underneath the
.la file in the .libs directory. If you do "make install", you'll see
that both the .a and .la files get installed. Alternatively, you can
just do the libtool install manually:

libtool --mode=install install libexpat.la /where/you/want/the/lib/

The .la file is not strictly necessary, but other packages that use
libtool can make use of it, especially if you've installed your
library to a non-standard location.

--
Dan