Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 97224
libXft.a the static Xft-1 libary is missing
Last modified: 2007-03-27 00:06:57 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de-DE; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030208 Netscape/7.02 Description of problem: libXft.a the static Xft-1 libary is missing. The matching cpp-header -file is present under /usr/include/Xft2/X11/Xft/Xft.h. The matching dynmic libary is also there /usr/X11R6/lib/libXft.so.1 /usr/X11R6/lib/libXft.so.1.2 the static libary ist missing in XFree86-devel-4.2.0-72.i386.rpm. it is also not present in XFree86-libs-4.2.0-72.i386.rpm that deliver the dynamic libarys. (under RedHat 7.x and 9.0 it is part of XFree-devel-4.x.x.i386.rpm) suse and debian deliver this libary by default. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): xft-1.2 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.I have the source of some Program's that needs Xft-1 like imoose and some Qt using tools. 2.a simple "make all" failes wenn trynig to link libXft.a by -lXft Actual Results: make fail's and exit withs error. It is not possible to build any Software that need's the static Xft-1 libary. Expected Results: if libXft.a ist present, it ist possible to link it Additional info: It does not make sense to have Xft.h without libXft.a, it's a bug. I need imoose for my work, i installed suse 8.1 on my computer in the University-Bremen, and build imoose on suse with no problems. But we prefer Redhat in Bremen in the university.
Red Hat Linux 7.3 shipped Xft 1.1. Red Hat Linux 8.0 shipped with: - Xft 1.2 for binary runtime compatibility as a shared library *only*, which Keith packard wrote to replace Xft 1.1 so that both Xft 1 and 2 could co-reside and both use the same font configuration system (fontconfig), instead of having 3 different font setups on one OS in order to get all X apps working properly, which would be insane. libXft.a is not accidentally missing from the XFree86 packages, it is intentionally missing, as Red Hat Linux 8.0 only provides runtime compatibility for the legacy version of Xft, and nothing in the distribution uses it except xterm and xditview, both of which compile as part of XFree86 building, so the developmental libraries aren't needed and are not supported for Xft 1.x, and the Xft1 headers are also intentionally not provided or supported. - Xft2, as the officially supported Xft, which everything in the distribution which uses Xft, including KDE, GNOME and all applications (except xterm and xditview) use. The static libXft.a which ships with the distro, is the Xft2 one, and that is part of the Xft-devel package. Red Hat Linux 9 ships the XFree86 4.3.0, which contains both Xft1 and Xft2 all as part of XFree86, as Keiths updated stuff got merged into 4.3.0. Xft1 is provided again only for runtime shared library support, and is not a compile target, and not supported. The libraries we ship, are the ones that XFree86 builds by default. Only Xft2 is supported by Red Hat Linux for developmental and compilation purposes. Xft1 is provided only for xterm/xditview, and whatever 3rd party binary apps happen to work with it, but it is deprecated and not supported. Developers should consider porting their applications from Xft1 to Xft2, as the Xft1 interfaces were experimental only, and deprecated when Xft2 came out.