Re: Will the real libiconv please stand up! Was : Re: [Mingw-users] baby steps, an half-finshed packaging of libiconv (very boring)

[Earnie B. <ear...@ya...>]

Tor Lillqvist wrote:

> Bruno Haible writes:
>  > I decided for the DLL name generated by Makefile.msvc - knowing that
>  > in the Woe32 world, the prefix "lib" is uncommon.
>
>  > The mingw32 porters of libtool decided to keep the "lib" prefix - for
>  > reasons I can only speculate about (maybe the desire to minimize the
>  > changes in Makefiles or in libtool?).
>
> This is a bit unfortunate, as there now are functionally identical
> DLLs floating around under these two names. (A libiconv DLL compiled
> with either gcc or MSVC is to the best of my knowledge perfectly
> useable from both gcc- and MSVC-compiled code.)
>

That depends on C vs C++.  AFAIK all of the C exports are fully compatible
between the to environments.  However, C++ is not.  From what I see, though,
libiconv is just C source.

>
> IMHO it would be best to standardize on using either one of these
> names. I have a slight bias in favour of "iconv.dll" as that is what
> the GLib DLL has been linked to until now. But I understand that for
> others the situation might be vice versa...

I agree to the standardization but I would standardize to all other
standards and give the name of libiconv.dll.  I would ask that glib change
to be consistent with the already standard lib prefix.

>
>
> (The gettext.sourceforge.net people really shouldn't be unnecessarily
> distributing their own build of the libiconv DLL, but instead use the
> officially sanctioned mingwrep one.)

Why do you think that the mingwrep distribution (or site) is "officially
sanctioned"?  I see no reason for it to be the "officially sanctioned"
distribution.  If the MinGW site itself chose to distribute this library,
would it not then be the "officially sanctioned" MinGW distribution?  I'm
still at a loss as to why the mingwrep project exists.  Now, it's become the
"officially sanctioned" site for distribution!!

Ok, maybe I'm over reacting.  But at least explain why the distributions
need to be on a project other than MinGW?

Earnie.