libtool 20030216: problem recognizing import libraries

[Charles Wilson]

David Starks-Browning wrote:
> On Friday 7 Mar 03, Teun Burgers writes:
> 
>>I've found the culprit. I installed the perl LWP module which
>>installs a HEAD script that fetches the header of an URL.
>>On unix HEAD and head are different but on cygwin having
>>both HEAD and head.exe along the path causes a problem...
> 
> 
> Would CYGWIN=check_case:strict solve that?

Maybe, but I'm NOT going to require that folks who want to build 
ANYTHING that uses libtool to set check_case on their machine.

But I also can't hardcode "head.exe" because that would break 
cygwin-target cross-compiles (the build platform's native head is 
certainly not 'head.exe' -- and the build platform probably doesn't 
suffer from 'case-insensitive/case-preserving' filesystem, coupled with 
'automatic appending of .exe'.

I think this will actually require more intrusive hacking in libtool; 
detect the "appropriate" name for head on the build platfrom, set a 
variable, use that, instead of invoking 'head' directly.

I don't think perl will EVER fix their problem; for all their talk about 
platform neutrality they have KNOWN about this problem for ages (since 
long before last Sept, Igor) and have evidenced no intention of fixing it.

"Hey guys, there's a name conflict between one of your packages's 
scripts and a widely deployed binary from the textutils package"

"That only affects cygwin; fixing it would break thousands of apps on 
dozens of platforms."

So we need to come up with a way around it.  I'll try to come up with 
something.  It'll probably involve hacking libtool.m4...and I better get 
cracking.  libtool-1.5 is due out before April 15.

--Chuck


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