[bug-gettext] WOE32DLL -- what DLLs should be built and what should they export

[B. Scott Michel]

I'm building gettext from scratch, namely to track down and resolve 
this particular issue -- far easier to modify a git repository than 
source from a tarball.

autogen.sh succeeds because it is generates static libraries. However, 
if the top-level configure script is invoked with "--enable-shared", 
then all libraries are built as shared libraries, which causes problems 
in libgettextlib and libgettextpo, namely the various "__imp"-prefixed 
symbols are not found (*).

Are libgettextlib and libgettextpo supposed to be built as shared 
libraries, or are they supposed to be built as static while "exporting" 
import symbols? Or is the WOE32DLL build process need fixing?

Looking at the code, my hunch is that the libraries are intended to be 
built statically and linked into another library that results in a 
shared library. But the build process is a bit krufty -- gnulib code is 
included in both libraries, which would make life complicated for ELF 
DSOs as well as WOE32DLL. For example, which error() should be called: 
the one from gnulib-lib or the local one in libgettextpo (theoretically, 
the linker should choose whichever occurs first on the linker command 
line or first defining library)? For WOE32DLL, exit_failure is 
instantiated twice, once in gnulib-lib (libgettextlib) and again in 
libgettextpo (or maybe the autogen.sh script is doing the wrong thing).

Any insight?


-scooter

(*) There are other context differences with the current source's 
gnulib-local/lib context diffs and gnulib HEAD, which I'll send as a 
separate patch. Also, various configure.ac's need to check for 
AC_PROG_CXX on MinGW/Cygwin, typically when cross compilers are used, as 
is the case for MinGW-w64 currently.