MinGW link against an MS Windows import library

[Bill Jones]

I could not find any recent discussion of this topic in the list archives.

I am trying to use libtool to create a DLL which requires linking my 
objects against a non-libtool MS Windows import library provided by a 
3rd party vendor.  The import library has the ".lib" extension and is in 
a separate directory from the DLL (with ".dll" extension).  I am using 
MinGW 3.1.0, Msys 1.0.9, Msys-DTK 1.0.1 (upgraded to automake-1.8.2, 
autoconf-2.59, and libtool-1.5.2).

Assuming that $import_lib_path is the location of the *.lib file and 
$import_root_name is the root name of the library (i.e. "foo" for 
"libfoo.lib"), I have tried adding the following to la_LIBADD in 
Makefile.am:

  1) "-L$import_lib_path -l$import_root_name" results in "ld.exe cannot 
find -lfoo"

  2) "$import_lib_path/lib$import_root_name.lib" is treated as an 
argument not a library, ignored by libtool as it is not passed to the 
generated gcc command.  However, issuing the gcc command manually works. 
 I think this is because the $lib_ext is set to "a" in the libtool 
script so this is processed as an argument.

  3)  Against my better judgement, I tried to alter $libext in my 
libtool script setting it to "lib".  This, however, again dropped the 
import library argument as libtool viewed the file as a static lib and 
issued

*** Warning: Trying to link with static lib archive 
$import_lib_path/lib$import_root_name.lib.
*** I have the capability to make that library automatically link in when
*** you link to this library.  But I can only do this if you have a
*** shared version of the library, which you do not appear to have
*** because the file extensions .lib of this argument makes me believe
*** that it is just a static archive that I should not used here.

  4) Specify path to DLL as $import_lib_path will link but generates an 
unusable libfoo.dll (no supprise here?).

I have also tried to use the depreicated AC_LIBTOOL_WIN32_DLL in my 
configure.in with no differences.

So the basic question is how do I specify a static import library with a 
*.lib extension to be used by libtool for resolving the symbols provided 
by a non-libtool DLL when building a dependent DLL with libtool?

Any help would be appreciated even if I am doing something totally stupid,

wtj
--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    Bill Jones                                   address@hidden
    Mail Stop 125                       Data Analysis and Imaging Branch
    15 Langley Boulevard                  Systems Engineering Competency
    NASA Langley Research Center                Building 1268, Room 1038
    Hampton, VA  23681-2199                        Phone +1 757 864-5318
                                                     Fax +1 757 864-7635
                                             http://geolab.larc.nasa.gov