It writes metadata into .la files, which are text-based adjuncts to .a files. It's meant to give you a common and portable interface to static and dynamic link

It writes metadata into .la files, which are text-based adjuncts to .a files. It's meant to give you a common and portable interface to static and dynamic linking. But libtool is written in POSIX shell, it's not part of the linker, and it is a bit of a disaster.