build configuration help

[Bob Rossi]

Hi,

I'm building an application that links to wxwidgets. I want to allow
wxwidgets to be built both statically (.a) and dynamically (.so).
This program builds on a variety of platforms, including linux and
mingw.

If I choose to build a static wxwidgets library, deployment is easy 
on both linux and mingw. If I choose to build a dynamic wxwidgets
library (.so or .dll) deployment gets a little more complicated.

On windows, the dll goes into the bin dir, and the program uses the
proper dll. This is something that windows does reasonably well.

On linux, there is no such guarentee. So, I have come up with 2
solutions, and wonder if someone else has a better idea, or prefers one
over the others.

  - Modify the automake to build the program as foo-bin, instead of foo
    on unix platforms. Then, install a script called foo, that sets the
    LD_LIBRARY_PATH and invokes foo-bin.
    This approach seems like a lot of modification to the autotools in
    order to get the tool to build with both static and dynamic version
    of wxwidgets.

  - Modify foo to know if it is using a shared wxwidgets library, and
    dlopen it if it is. I haven't tested this yet, and don't even know
    if it will work.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Bob Rossi