gdal-config --libs listing lots of unnecessary things to link against

[warmerdam]

On systems like linux the GDAL shared library internally depends on various sublibraries; however, it is not necessary for applications linking against GDAL to also link against these sublibraries.

An example of this if GDAL is built against mysql, gdal-config --libs lists something like "-L/usr/lib/mysql -lmysqlclient" amoung lots of other things. But an application linking against libgdal.so does *not* need to link against the mysqlclient library.

If a packaged GDAL is being used to build another package, like MapServer, this extra linking will force MapServer to need the mysql-dev package (with libmysqlclient.so) when really the only requirment is the runtime package (with something like libmysqlclient.so.15). This is the case with MapServer ticket 3199:

​http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/ticket/3199

Somehow we need to work out how to limit gdal-config --libs to only listing required libraries for applications building against the GDAL library. I would think in most cases this would be only "-L/wrk/home/warmerda/gdal -lgdal".

[l]

Could gDal use dlopen to avoid forcing users to have unused libraries around in their systems? I am way over my head here, but please check ​https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=843808 for further clarification on my meaning.

[Even Rouault]

This ticket has been automatically closed because Trac is no longer used for GDAL bug tracking, since the project has migrated to GitHub. If you believe this ticket is still valid, you may file it to ​https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/issues if it is not already reported there.