Re: Unhelpful behaviour on Cygwin when "file" isn't installed

[Olly Betts]

On 2006-02-24, Charles Wilson <address@hidden> wrote:
> Olly Betts wrote:
>> I've only used it briefly once some time ago, and I can't remember
>> much about it.  But if it does, then libtool should really depend on
>> file.
>
> The official libtool package for cygwin (e.g. the one you get if you
> select 'libtool' in the cygwin installer) DOES in fact depend on 'file'.

That's excellent.

> That package is called "libtool1.5-1.5.20-2" (hard to miss, because
> there is no other libtool in the official distro).
>
> However, you mentioned that your user was using "libtool-1.5.22".

I've just reread the thread, and realised I wasn't thinking this
through correctly.  *I* used libtool 1.5.22 (on Linux) to generate the
tarball.  The end user (on cygwin) downloaded it and tried to compile,
without file installed.  But *he* didn't have libtool installed,
because he doesn't need it just to compile a libtool-ed package.

Sorry for any confusion caused, and for besmirching the cygwin libtool
package.

I don't think there's an obvious dependency cygwin could add to help
this (unless perhaps something rather arbitrary like making 'make'
depend on 'file').  So libtool (or rather packages it generates)
probably does need to cope with file not being installed (or perhaps
just check for it in configure and get the user to install it).  I think
for now I'll just add such a check to my project's configure.

Cheers,
    Olly