Re: [Bug-gnulib] using gnulib modules in shared libraries on Windows

[Paul Eggert]

Bruno Haible <address@hidden> writes:

> http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2003-08/msg00191.html

Sorry, I must have missed this in August, but I'll reply now.

My kneejerk reaction is that this sort of thing may be heading down
the wrong path.  The GNU coding standards say:

  As for systems that are not like Unix, such as MSDOS, Windows, the
  Macintosh, VMS, and MVS, supporting them is often a lot of work.  When
  that is the case, it is better to spend your time adding features that
  will be useful on GNU and GNU/Linux, rather than on supporting other
  incompatible systems.

As I understand it, the code works correctly even without the proposed
changes; the changes are needed only to make the code run more
efficiently under MSVC and/or mingw32, and the efficiency gains, while
nonzero, are by no means an order of magnitude.  One can hope that
MSVC and/or mingw32 will evolve, and will eventually support that
particular optimization without such extensive Windows-specific
modifications to gnulib code.  In the mean time, perhaps it's better
to leave sleeping dogs lie.