Recent evolution rpms (e.g., evolution-1.4.4-6.i386.rpm) contain lots of apparently uneeded .a files. One of these inparticular is *HUGE* $ ls -l /usr/lib/evolution/1.4/components/libevolution-calendar.a -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 40906900 Sep 11 16:36 /usr/lib/evolution/1.4/components/libevolution-calendar.a This is more than half the bytes in the evolution package! The .a in question appears to be pretty strangely linked. It contains 2 copies of another library (libdb.a). I don't believe that any of the .a files are needed in the main evolution rpm. Possibly they could be moved to the -devel, although I suspect that these components are designed to be dynamically loaded and that the .a files are of no use whatsoever.
I built my own binary RPM using the 1.4.4-6 Rawhide Evolution source RPM. My file is not nearly that large: $ ls -la /usr/lib/evolution/1.4/components/libevolution-calendar.a -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9599170 Sep 12 16:25 /usr/lib/evolution/1.4/components/libevolution-calendar.a bzip2, with maximum compression, brings the file down to a hair over 3M. I do agree with you that this file seems to be out of place considering the shared object is also within the same file. Perhaps it should be moved to a evolution-static package?
Moving them into -devel when 1.4.5 is released. Probably huge due to a build root getting an out of sync rpm config (and thus not stripping them)
Done in 1.4.5 package
libdb.a is still included twice in /usr/lib/evolution/1.4/components/libevolution-calendar.a, which is still 38 megs in size 1.4.5-5
Triaged -> Close. This is fixed in FC1
Don't close it. It's not fixed: [kaboom@skuld kaboom]$ rpm -qf /usr/lib/evolution/1.4/components/libevolution-calendar.a evolution-devel-1.4.5-7 [kaboom@skuld kaboom]$ ls -l /usr/lib/evolution/1.4/components/libevolution-calendar.a -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 39749272 Oct 28 09:28 /usr/lib/evolution/1.4/components/libevolution-calendar.a [kaboom@skuld kaboom]$
is it a problem if it is only in the evolution-devel package?
It doesn't need to be that big AFAICT -- it's so big at least in part because libs are included twice in the archive. Maybe there's some reason for that, though?
Closing; fixed in rawhide.