[Mingw-users] does gcc4 really depend on pthreads-w32-dev ?

[Albrecht S. <vms...@go...>]

I found that gcc4 requires pthreads-w32-*-mingw32-dev and
libpthread-*-mingw32-dll-2. I understand that the latter is needed
for the gcc runtime, but do we really need the pthreads dev files?

See here (lines may wrap):

$ grep pthread /mingw/var/lib/mingw-get/data/*|grep require
/mingw/var/lib/mingw-get/data/mingw32-gcc4.xml:        <requires 
eq="pthreads-w32-*-mingw32-dev.tar" />
/mingw/var/lib/mingw-get/data/mingw32-gcc4.xml:        <requires 
eq="libpthread-*-mingw32-dll-2.tar" />
[...]

The problem I *had* with this was that autoconf/configure of a software
package insisted on linking with pthreads, simply because it found
the existing headers and libs (this software works optionally with
pthreads on U*X systems, but uses native Windows threads on Windows).
Hence, libpthread is not needed when building on Windows.

This (configure problem) is fixed now, but I wanted to point this out
anyway. I'd like to remove pthreads-w32-dev, but (re-)installing gcc
installs it again:

$ mingw-get remove pthreads-w32-dev
...
remove: pthreads-w32-2.8.0-3-mingw32-dev.tar.lzma
  removing release pthreads-w32-2.8.0-3-mingw32-dev.tar.lzma

Okay so far, but:

$ mingw-get install gcc
...
install: gcc-4.5.2-1-mingw32-lic.tar.lzma
  installing gcc-4.5.2-1-mingw32-lic.tar.lzma
install: pthreads-w32-2.8.0-3-mingw32-dev.tar.lzma      <<<<<<
  installing pthreads-w32-2.8.0-3-mingw32-dev.tar.lzma   <<<<<<
install: gcc-core-4.5.2-1-mingw32-bin.tar.lzma
  installing gcc-core-4.5.2-1-mingw32-bin.tar.lzma
install: gcc-4.5.2-1-mingw32-doc.tar.lzma
  installing gcc-4.5.2-1-mingw32-doc.tar.lzma
install: gcc-4.5.2-1-mingw32-lang.tar.lzma
  installing gcc-4.5.2-1-mingw32-lang.tar.lzma

.. installs pthreads-w32.dev again.

BTW: "mingw-get upgrade gcc" does NOT install pthreads-*-dev.


So there are 2 questions:

  - can/should the dependency on pthreads-w32-dev be removed ?
  - why does 'upgrade' not install the listed dependency?

TIA
Albrecht