File: libtool.info,  Node: Cheap tricks,  Prev: libtool script contents,  Up: Maintaining

15.5 Cheap tricks
=================

Here are a few tricks that you can use to make maintainership easier:

   • When people report bugs, ask them to use the ‘--config’, ‘--debug’,
     or ‘--features’ flags, if you think they will help you.  These
     flags are there to help you get information directly, rather than
     having to trust second-hand observation.

   • Rather than reconfiguring libtool every time I make a change to
     ‘ltmain.in’, I keep a permanent ‘libtool’ script in my ‘PATH’,
     which sources ‘ltmain.in’ directly.

     The following steps describe how to create such a script, where
     ‘/home/src/libtool’ is the directory containing the libtool source
     tree, ‘/home/src/libtool/libtool’ is a libtool script that has been
     configured for your platform, and ‘~/bin’ is a directory in your
     ‘PATH’:

          trick$ cd ~/bin
          trick$ sed 's%^\(macro_version=\).*$%\1@VERSION@%;
                      s%^\(macro_revision=\).*$%\1@package_revision@%;
                      /^# ltmain\.sh/q' /home/src/libtool/libtool > libtool
          trick$ echo '. /home/src/libtool/ltmain.in' >> libtool
          trick$ chmod +x libtool
          trick$ libtool --version
          ltmain.sh (GNU @PACKAGE@@TIMESTAMP@) @VERSION@

          Copyright (C) 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
          This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
          warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
          trick$

   The output of the final ‘libtool --version’ command shows that the
‘ltmain.in’ script is being used directly.  Now, modify ‘~/bin/libtool’
or ‘/home/src/libtool/ltmain.in’ directly in order to test new changes
without having to rerun ‘configure’.