GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool

10.5. Convenience Libraries

Sometimes it is useful to group objects together in an intermediate stage of a project's compilation to provide a useful handle for that group without having to specify all the individual objects every time. Convenience libraries are a portable way of creating such a partially linked object: Libtool will handle all the low-level details in a way appropriate to the target host. This section describes the use of convenience libraries in conjunction with Automake. The principles of convenience libraries are discussed in Section 9.2.4, "Creating Convenience Libraries."

The key to creating Libtool convenience libraries with Automake is to use the 'noinst_LTLIBRARIES' macro. For the Libtool libraries named in this macro, ...