coreutils-5.3.0-4 rm change breaks Libtool

[Robert Ögren]

Hi everybody,

the change in rm semantics, implicit .exe handling, in coreutils-5.3.0-4 
breaks Libtool (1.5.10, and some later versions). More specifically, 
when Libtool is used to link an executable which requires a wrapper 
script to handle uninstalled libraries, the corresponding wrapper .exe 
is now incorrectly removed (but not the script without the .exe 
extension). What happens in libtool is this:

1. gcc is used to create "output.exe"
2. rm is used to remove "output"   (the script, without .exe, but now 
this removes the .exe instead)
3. libtool creates "output"

I think the problem only occurs if the build directory is clean so that 
there is no old output script lying around.

The easiest way to reproduce the problem is to run the Libtool 
testsuite, for example by uninstalling Cygwin's Libtool and installing 
the libtool-1.5.14 tarball. Run the Libtool testcases with "make check" 
and you will notice several SKIPs because of missing .exes, which 
doesn't happen with older coreutils.

The problem also occurs with a very recent Libtool HEAD from CVS.

Working around the problem isn't hard, just comment out the offending rm 
line in Libtool's ltmain.sh, or downgrade to coreutils-5.3.0-3. It 
shouldn't be that hard to make a proper change for this in Libtool if 
the rm change is here to stay.

I'll attach the output of cygcheck -svr in case you need it. Note that I 
have to use Cygwin 1.5.13-1 instead of 1.5.14-1, the latter made a lot 
of Cygwin programs crash at startup as other people also seem to have 
noted on this list.

Btw, thanks for all your hard work on Cygwin, it is an amazing piece of 
software!


Robert
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