Re: Avoid gawkextlib as a separate shared library (was: MinGw port of gawkextlib)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: bug-gawk@gnu.org
> From: Manuel Collado <mcollado2011@gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 17 May 2022 10:32:16 +0200
> 
> And I vaguely remember another install issue on MinGw. The file 
> gawkextlib-0.dll need to be in the \bin directory to run 
> gawk+some-extension, and also need to be in \lib to build 
> some-extension. Otherwise make fails to locate gawkextlib as a shared 
> library at the link phase, and offer to link it statically.

That shouldn't happen.  The DLL should be installed in the bin/
directory and the import library libgawkextlib.dll.a should be in
lib/, where the linker will find it.  And that's exactly what happens
on my system, where "make install" did TRT with both of those files,
and linking gawk-mpfr therefore succeeds, both at link time and at run
time (when I run the test suite).

I think this works because gawkextlib uses libtool, and libtool
already knows how to install shared libraries on MS-Windows.

> This issue has been discussed long time ago. My proposal was to move the 
> stuff in /lib to /shared, and add strhash.{c,o} and varinit.{c.o} to the 
> lists of files required by some extensions. I.e., link this stuff 
> statically instead of a shared library.
> 
> Both strhash and varinit are small. Is it really convenient to avoid 
> duplicating this small code in the extensions that require them? I guess 
> few people will install a bunch of extensions all of them requiring all 
> the content of gawkextlib.
> 
> Is it ok to discuss the issue again?

FWIW, I don't see the issue on my system, having followed the regular
installation procedure.  But don't let that stop you from discussing.