Re: [Mingw-users] library name

[Keith M. <kei...@to...>]

Julien Lecomte wrote, quoting me:
> I don't think their [sic] is a *need* to remove the existing libraries
> but it would be *highly* *recommeded*.
>
>> Quoting Earnie Boyd:
>>> That isn't really accomplished easily 
>>> with a tarball so we have decided to leave the name the with just a .a 

>>> extension.
>>
>> Something of a cop-out, perhaps, for surely it should be possible to
>> automate the entire process with a script -- would you care to provide
>> and maintain one, Julien?
>
> Why a script ? Shouldn't it all be done in the makefiles ?

I was thinking of the scenario wher a user downloads the prebuilt
binary tarballs, and unpacks those in place of an existing installation.
Such a user won't be using Makefiles, to perform an upgrade.

> Just by modifying the configure script, we can add an option such as 
> --with-new-naming (or --with-libtool-naming) that would take care of 
> building and installing of whichever the user wants.

Again, this won't help for a upgrade based on binary tarballs.

What would be required is:--

- Tarballs are built, exclusively with legacy library file names.
- User downloads and unpacks these, overwriting similarly named
  files in his/her existing installation.
- User runs script, removing any import libraries with new names,
  for which a legacy named replacement is present, and renames the
  legacy named replacement with the new name.

Note that it isn't acceptable to erase the original installation,
before progressing an upgrade;  that could remove more than the
upgrade will replace, particularly if the user is in the habit of
installing mingwPORTs, or other additional packages, into the
MinGW tree, (which *is* the default for mingwPORTs).

Regards,
Keith.