Re: [Mingw-users] An question about MinGW libraries.

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

On Saturday 04 December 2010 06:31:19 yuan zheng wrote:
> I find that there are two libraries named libkernel32.lib and
> libmsvcrt.lib in MinGW/lib/ ...

There should not be; these should be libkernel32.a and libmsvcrt.a 
respectively.

> meanwhile, there are two libraries named kernel32.dll and msvcrt.dll
> in win32(windows/system32).

Correct.

> When I link libraries with  "-lkernel32 -lmsvcrt", it will link the
> win32 libraries because the shared libraries' priority is higher.

No, it will not; the win32 system DLL path is not (normally) included in 
the linker's search path.  What the linker will use is the above named 
pair of *import* libraries -- the .a variants -- which cause dynamic 
linking to the system DLLs, at run time.

BTW, if you really do have libkernel32.lib and libmsvcrt.lib, the use 
of -lkernel32 and -lmsvcrt will *not* cause them to be linked anyway, 
because they are inappropriately named; see the binutils documentation 
for ld, for the actual naming conventions which are applicable.

Furthermore, if you are using gcc/g++ and friends correctly, rather than 
misusing ld directly for linking, then *you* don't need to specify the
-lkernel32 or -lmsvcrt; they are automatically specified by the linker 
driver itself.

> But actually, I want to link libkernel32.lib and libmsvcrt.lib.

Why?  If they are the .a import libraries we provide, then they link 
dynamically to the system DLLs anyway.  If they are anything else, then 
they are likely not compatible with MinGW in any case.

> And in my link options there are some shared libraries, so I can't use
> the "-static" link option.

If you really must override dynamic linking for a subset of libraries, 
refer to the ld documentation for the -Bdynamic and -Bstatic options, 
(specified through GCC as -Wl,-Bdynamic and -Wl,-Bstatic).

-- 
Regards,
Keith.