Re: MinGW link against an MS Windows import library

[Tim Van Holder]

Bob Friesenhahn wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Apr 2004, Earnie Boyd wrote:
>
> So all that is needed is for libtool to accept .lib as an extension
> and for libtool to (possibly naively) assume that if a similarly-named
> DLL exists that the .lib file is a DLL link library?

Yes and no.  For one thing, there is no requirement for the build
machine to actually have a copy of the DLL; also, the DLL can be located
anywhere (not even necessarily in the PATH) - it just needs to be
findable when the resulting linked application is run.

The Microsoft import libraries (e.g. kernel32.lib) are recognizable
(all entries in the .lib file list 'KERNEL32.DLL' as name), but those
are provided as .a by MingW, so that's not much of a help either (and
I'm fairly certain non-MS import libraries don't have the same
'feature').