Re: [Mingw-users] pkg-config and libtool issue

[Ralf W. <Ral...@gm...>]

Hi Keith, Michael,

* Keith MARSHALL wrote on Tue, Nov 15, 2005 at 10:38:55AM CET:
> Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > Hmm.  On second thought: if pkg-config generated the string
> >   C:/msys/1.0/local/lib/libogg.la
> > then that should have been
> >   /usr/usr/local/lib/libogg.la
> > instead, iff pkg-config has a way to produce this instead.
> > At least for libtool libraries the latter path would always be
> > correct, I believe.
> 
> I've never used either libtool or pkg-config, but this problem
> appears to result from a comparison of path names generated by
> two separate tools, one of which uses Windoze native path format,
> while the second uses MSYS virtual path name format.

ACK.

> For any tool which is going to compare path names reliably in the
> MSYS environment, I would suggest that all such paths be reduced
> to the native Windoze format.  A few weeks ago, I posted this
> autoconf MSYS_AC_CANONICAL_PATH macro:
>  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.mingw.msys/2785

Thanks for the pointer!

> which does just that for any path name, when the expanded form is
> invoked in MSYS, while remaining safe, (actually resolving any path
> name to its canonical absolute form), on *nix systems.  Perhaps
> libtool and/or pkg-config could adapt that for their needs.

Yes probably.  Using w32 paths throughout has its share of problems,
too.  For example, it makes path concatenation (for DESTDIR) hard.  So
for this alone, (since reverse mapping from the w32 path is hard), it
would be better if pkg-config provided the unix-style path, iff
possible.  Note also, your macro requires that the path exists (which is
fine for the issue at hand).  In general, we cannot assume this in
libtool (for all our uses of paths), so our strategy is to convert to
w32 paths at the latest possible points.

Michael, I have not received mail from you off-list yet, and assume my
mail has not reached you either.  You may want to try resending; I
can only guess that, in case you zip'ed before, you may want to try
a different packing method, or none FWIW.

I need the trace in order to work on this issue.

Cheers,
Ralf