RE: Programs differing only by ".exe" suffix: subtle Libtool 1.3

["Gary V. Vaughan" <gary@oranda.demon.co.uk>]

On 23-May-99 Thomas Tanner wrote:
> 
> On 22-May-99 Matthew D. Langston wrote:
>> In a nutshell, an Automake/Libtool package becomes "broken" when two
>> programs (i.e. in some Automake "_PROGRAMS" primary) differ in their
>> names only by the suffix ".exe".  For example, the following snippet
>> from `Makefile.am' works as expected:
> 
>  Thanks. Fixed.
>  
>> I recently came across this bug while "Autoconfing" a package called
>> ROOT (an analysis package for High Energy Physics).  My "Autoconfed"
>> version of ROOT creates two programs named "root" and "root.exe".  Since
>> I am packaging a 3rd party package, I have no control over the names of
>> these two programs.  I have had to fall back to Libtool 1.2 for now.
> 
>  Using prog and prog.exe at the same time isn't really portable.
>  On CygWin libtool has to strip off the .exe suffix from the
>  wrapper script, i.e., prog == prog.exe.

Infact it is worse than that.  It is non-portable to rely on when a .exe suffix
might be found at all.  Because of the stupid file extension associations in
win32, anything will an exe suffix is assumed (at the OS level) to be a binary
executable, so depending on whether or not a bin_PROGRAMS target is compiled
statically or dynamically, it may end up being a binary with an exe suffix, or
a wrapper script which cannot have an exe suffix (or it will not run under
win32).

Automake and libtool go to some lengths to manage suffixes in a way that will
work transparently (except for needing AC_EXEEXT), and trying to manage using
exe suffixes in a different way within a package can only lead to a conflict of
interests which will make it all the more difficult for someone to port the
package to win32.

Cheers,
        Gary.
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