PCRE package for consideration
Charles Wilson
cwilson@ece.gatech.edu
Fri May 2 03:28:00 GMT 2003
Ronald Landheer-Cieslak wrote:
> I'll apply the patch, test it and report back.
>
> If all this works, I'll also ask mr Hazel to relibtoolize
> and see whether the same thing also works on MinGW (if so,
> consider the ON_WINDOWS crap gone).
Now, let's not be hasty. While my patch *should* enable pcre to build
properly on mingw -- assuming your MSYS environment has up-to-date
autotools -- it relies on auto-import.
Auto-import works fine on both cygwin and mingw.
However, on mingw there are a few compatibility issues that one should
consider. DLLs which rely on auto-import under mingw are NOT compatible
with MSVC or BorlandC development -- only the GNU linker understands
auto-import. (Just to avoid confusion:
--------------------------
On machine A, you have mingw/MSYS installed, and build
libfoo-0.dll
a mingw DLL which utilizes auto-import. It is created using
MSYS/mingw tools.
bar.exe
a mingw app which is created using MSYS/mingw tools. It is linked
against libfoo-0.dll.
No problems. bar.exe runs like a champ. You then copy libfoo-0.dll
and bar.exe over to machine B. On machine B, you only have MSVC; no
mingw tools at all.
You can RUN bar.exe with no problems.
Now, you copy the source code for bar.exe from machine A to machine B --
and try to rebuild the app using MSVC, linking against the already-built
libfoo-0.dll.
No can do. MSVC doesn't understand the dll's export table.
----------------------------
Since the whole point of mingw is an interoperable (but free
beer/speech) compiler on windows, the decision to create a "port" of a
library using auto-import should be carefully considered.
On cygwin, though, no such worries attest. We're happily independent of
MSVC/Borland's linker and don't need to worry about their lack of
capability in this regard.
So, while this is a porter/maintainer decision, there are good reasons
to keep the "ON_WINDOWS" gobbledy-gook for mingw, IF you wish. (But on
cygwin -- go ahead, use auto-import. C'mon in, the water's fine.)
--Chuck
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