Subject: tags for objc and objcxx

From: Karl Berry <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2023 11:06:03 -0700

Hi (is there anyone maintaining libtool nowadays? Alex, are you there?) -

I just installed the patch below to Automake, passing the OBJC and
OBJCXX tags to libtool for the respective languages. It would be good if
libtool recognized those tags. 
https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=67539

The reason to pass them before being recognized by libtool is to
avoid an immediate fatal error, as explained in that bug.
The libtool manual says (line 2930):
    [...] can't infer
    a tag, then it defaults to the configuration for the @code{C} language.

But clearly this is no longer the case, which seems like a good
thing. Thus I suggest replacing that text with something like:
    [...] can't infer
    a tag, then it exits immediately with a fatal error.

Happy hacking,
Karl

--- a/bin/automake.in
+++ b/bin/automake.in
@@ -739,6 +739,7 @@ register_language ('name' => 'objc',
 		   'compiler' => 'OBJCCOMPILE',
 		   'compile_flag' => '-c',
 		   'output_flag' => '-o',
+		   'libtool_flag' => 'OBJC',
 		   'lder' => 'OBJCLD',
 		   'ld' => '$(OBJC)',
 		   'pure' => 1,
@@ -757,6 +758,7 @@ register_language ('name' => 'objcxx',
 		   'compiler' => 'OBJCXXCOMPILE',
 		   'compile_flag' => '-c',
 		   'output_flag' => '-o',
+		   'libtool_flag' => 'OBJCXX',
 		   'lder' => 'OBJCXXLD',
 		   'ld' => '$(OBJCXX)',
 		   'pure' => 1,