PCRE package for consideration

[Charles Wilson]

Ronald Landheer-Cieslak wrote:

 > I'll apply the patch, test it and report back.
 >
 > If all this works, I'll also ask mr Hazel to relibtoolize
 > and see whether the same thing also works on MinGW (if so,
 > consider the ON_WINDOWS crap gone).

Now, let's not be hasty.  While my patch *should* enable pcre to build 
properly on mingw -- assuming your MSYS environment has up-to-date 
autotools -- it relies on auto-import.

Auto-import works fine on both cygwin and mingw.

However, on mingw there are a few compatibility issues that one should 
consider.  DLLs which rely on auto-import under mingw are NOT compatible 
with MSVC or BorlandC development -- only the GNU linker understands 
auto-import.  (Just to avoid confusion:

--------------------------
On machine A, you have mingw/MSYS installed, and build

libfoo-0.dll
   a mingw DLL which utilizes auto-import.  It is created using 
MSYS/mingw tools.

bar.exe
   a mingw app which is created using MSYS/mingw tools.  It is linked 
against libfoo-0.dll.

No problems.  bar.exe runs like a champ.   You then copy libfoo-0.dll 
and bar.exe over to machine B.  On machine B, you only have MSVC; no 
mingw tools at all.

You can RUN bar.exe with no problems.

Now, you copy the source code for bar.exe from machine A to machine B -- 
and try to rebuild the app using MSVC, linking against the already-built 
libfoo-0.dll.

No can do.  MSVC doesn't understand the dll's export table.
----------------------------

Since the whole point of mingw is an interoperable (but free 
beer/speech) compiler on windows, the decision to create a "port" of a 
library using auto-import should be carefully considered.

On cygwin, though, no such worries attest.  We're happily independent of 
MSVC/Borland's linker and don't need to worry about their lack of 
capability in this regard.

So, while this is a porter/maintainer decision, there are good reasons 
to keep the "ON_WINDOWS" gobbledy-gook for mingw, IF you wish.  (But on 
cygwin -- go ahead, use auto-import.  C'mon in, the water's fine.)

--Chuck