Common Issues Related to Libtool's Use

required file `./ltmain.sh' not found

Libtool comes with a tool called libtoolize that will install libtool's supporting files into a package. Running this command will install ltmain.sh. You should execute it before aclocal and automake.

People upgrading old packages to newer autotools are likely to face this issue because older Automake versions used to call libtoolize. Therefore old build scripts do not call libtoolize.

Since Automake 1.6, it has been decided that running libtoolize was none of Automake's business. Instead, that functionality has been moved into the autoreconf command (see Using autoreconf). If you do not want to remember what to run and when, just learn the autoreconf command. Hopefully, replacing existing bootstrap.sh or autogen.sh scripts by a call to autoreconf should also free you from any similar incompatible change in the future.

Objects created with both libtool and without

Sometimes, the same source file is used both to build a libtool library and to build another non-libtool target (be it a program or another library).

Let's consider the following Makefile.am.

     bin_PROGRAMS = prog
     prog_SOURCES = prog.c foo.c ...
     
     lib_LTLIBRARIES = libfoo.la
     libfoo_la_SOURCES = foo.c ...
     

(In this trivial case the issue could be avoided by linking libfoo.la with prog instead of listing foo.c in prog_SOURCES. But let's assume we really want to keep prog and libfoo.la separate.)

Technically, it means that we should build foo.$(OBJEXT) for prog, and foo.lo for libfoo.la. The problem is that in the course of creating foo.lo, libtool may erase (or replace) foo.$(OBJEXT) - and this cannot be avoided.

Therefore, when Automake detects this situation it will complain with a message such as

     object `foo.$(OBJEXT)' created both with libtool and without
     

A workaround for this issue is to ensure that these two objects get different basenames. As explained in renamed objects, this happens automatically when per-targets flags are used.

     bin_PROGRAMS = prog
     prog_SOURCES = prog.c foo.c ...
     prog_CFLAGS = $(AM_CFLAGS)
     
     lib_LTLIBRARIES = libfoo.la
     libfoo_la_SOURCES = foo.c ...
     

Adding prog_CFLAGS = $(AM_CFLAGS) is almost a no-op, because when the prog_CFLAGS is defined, it is used instead of AM_CFLAGS. However as a side effect it will cause prog.c and foo.c to be compiled as prog-prog.$(OBJEXT) and prog-foo.$(OBJEXT) which solves the issue.