Need help compiling gpgme fat

[David Shaw]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 06:49:20PM +0100, Stéphane Corthésy wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've just downloaded latest libtool (1.5.22), and replaced  
> config.guess, config.sub, install-sh and ltmain.sh, applied my  
> previous patch on generated libtool, and now it works :-) I can now  
> build libgpgme for both ppc and intel in one pass/one lib.
> (maybe my patch is not even needed, I haven't tried yet without it)
> When will you upgrade your libtool (as well as gpg's, as I guess  
> there is the same problem when trying to compile gpg as fat binary)?

No, GPG doesn't use libtool.  In theory, compiling a fat GPG binary is
pretty simple.  The main difficulty is getting the endian stuff for
the ciphers right (ppc being big, and intel being little).

I'm able to build a fat binary that passes the selftest on my ppc OSX
box.  If you (or anyone here) has an intel OSX box and is willing to
test as well, let me know.  In theory, it should be as simple as a
change to the configure script, but there is no way to tell without
trying it.

I have to admit, though, I'm not sure what the benefit of a fat GPG
is.  The idea behind fat binaries is a good one (companies don't need
to maintain two different products generated from the same source
code, with twice as much space in warehouses, etc).  For free software
like GPG that is "shipped" as source, I'm curious where is the
benefit?

David