Re: libtool and cl

[Robert Boehne]

Braden,

For libltdl to work, you'd have to have Windows
declspec(__dllimport) and declspec(__dllexport) applied
properly, which isn't currently done.  As far as libname.lib
being used for both static & dynamic, AIX uses libname.a for
both, and in fact, libname.a can be BOTH a static & dynamic
library in the same file under AIX.
What we do for AIX is we only build one or the other, i.e.
if --enable-shared is passed, we build shared only.  I don't
think it would take much work to get this up and running.

Good luck,

Robert

Braden McDaniel wrote:
> 
> Has anyone in earshot here given any thought to what it might take to fix
> libtool's cl (Microsoft Visual C++ compiler) support? I have an interest in
> fixing this, and I'm in the process of poking around to see what it's gonna
> take. I am far from an expert on MS Windows libraries; but I'm prepared to
> fake it.
> 
> The stickiest point I've found so far is that "libname.lib" can refer either
> to a static library, or an "import library" that is associated with a DLL.
> This has two significant ramifications for libtool:
> 
>  * libtool's current assumption that "libname.lib" when it appears on the
> command line refers to a static library is not valid. But because there's no
> syntactic difference in the way import libraries and static libraries are
> specified to cl, libtool should simply proceed regardless. This doesn't seem
> hard to address.
> 
>  * When building both static and shared (DLL) libraries, there will be a
> problem in that the import library created along with the DLL will have the
> same name as the static library. The static library could be disambiguated,
> of course; but that raises the question of whether the disambiguation should
> be applied silently by libtool to try to locate a library prior to linking.
> For example, if the disambiguation of "foo.lib" results in "libfoo.lib",
> should libtool convert a reference to "foo.lib" on the command line to
> "libfoo.lib" if "foo.lib" cannot be found?
> 
> The latter issue stands to get into munging command line parameters. If
> libtool Goes There, then perhaps it should just accept POSIX-style -l
> parameters instead and convert them into things cl understands.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> --
> Braden McDaniel <address@hidden>
> Software Engineer, Object Sciences Corporation
> 
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