Re: C# support for automake

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Bruno,

* Bruno Haible wrote on Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 08:38:43PM CET:
> > > Object code libraries are files with suffix ".dll". They are installed
> > > under $prefix/lib.
> >
> > Is it reasonable to assume that programs will link against these
> > libraries, which are
> > - not built in the same package as the dll
> 
> Yes. Making code available for use by other programs is one of the main
> purposes of object code libraries.

:)

> You certainly want to know about library versioning :-)

:)

> Every library and every executable has a version attached. It can be
> set through a particular kind of statement inside a C# source file,
> like this:
>    [assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.0")]
> So, every object code library and every executable is assigned a so-called
> "strong name". The strong names of the dependencies are stored by the
> linker inside every library or executable.

Interesting.  Is there an API/command line tool to extract this version?

> > - which do not contain C# code, and are not built or run with one of the
> >   tools below?
> 
> No. Such a use of C# libraries is certainly not mainstream.

So no need to bring libtool into play here, good. :)

> > > sed_quote_subst='s/\([|&;<>()$`"'"'"'*?[#~=%      \\]\)/\\\1/g'
> >
> > If you encounter options with backslashes frequently (even on non-w32
> > hosts), you may want to parameterize use of echo.
> 
> The problem was not 'echo'; I wanted to be able to define this sed
> expression outside of backslashes.

Hmm.  I don't understand your statement -- maybe we both misunderstood
each other.  What I meant was:

Later in this script, you often use
  foo="$foo"`echo "$arg" | sed "$sed_quote_subst"`
             ^^^^
Problem is, this echo may kill strings of the form `\t' in $arg.
To prevent this, you could parameterize it.

It may very well be the case that you'll only likely encounter arguments
containing `\t' (and the like) on w32 systems.  AFAIK there all commonly
used shells have been adjusted so that their builtin `echo' does not
interpret backslashes.  So in that case you could leave things as they
are.

> > How does the installed program find its libraries?
> > How the uninstalled?
> 
> In both cases: through the -L option passed to csharpexec.sh. Inside
> csharpexec.sh, for some C# engines, the -L option translates into options;
> for others, it translates into the setting of an environment variable.

Hmm, so somebody still has to play the 'gimme the uninstalled paths'.
At least I don't see that it is done automatically.  In the case
  proggie_exe_LDADD = -L ../libs -lfoobar

so maybe you want the Makefile to create (uninstalled!) proggie with

  exec $top_builddir/csharpexec.sh -L ../libs -lfoobar proggie.exe

in it?

Are inter-library dependencies specified?  (This is the question I'm
really interested in.  If yes, I see little chance to create above in
very few lines of code.  Depends on the dependency model though.)

Cheers,
Ralf