Re: Extend libtool dll namespaces for mingw-w64

[JonY]

On 1/30/2010 22:56, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> If any of the Libtool users come and complain about libtool not linking
> against their old (or new) libraries after we've made the change, I want
> to be able to point to your documentation site and tell them "we had no
> choice, upstream had a flag day, tough luck for your proprietary
> software and you expecting us to remain compatible".

I see, I will get a wiki entry to explain the change.

> > Since all these DLLs all run on Windows, we can't
> > expect users to constantly fiddle with PATH to load the correct DLL, or
> > copy DLLs to every directory where their executables live.
>
> That's a non-argument.  If I understood the rest of the thread
> correctly, then 64bit Windows will have no problem anyway as it skips
> 32bit libraries.  So all you ever need to do is have one entry in the
> PATH for 64bit stuff and one for 32bit stuff.  I'd even consider
> installing 64bit packages in a separate --prefix from 32bit ones to be
> good packaging practice, but that may just be me.

I misunderstood one of the users who was testing an XP 64bit, it seems
that it does not skip incompatible DLLs like Vista or 7. After some
confirmation, its clear that XP64 does skip properly, so maybe having
the same prefix for 64bit/32bit mingw-w64 DLLs would work.

The --prefix thing may not work for installing multilib GCC though. GCC 
could be changed to install DLLs into lib{32,64} so it doesn't get 
clobbered on install. This fixup can come later.