Re: Extension packaging

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 10:49:37 -0400
> From: "Andrew J. Schorr" <aschorr@telemetry-investments.com>
> Cc: mcollado2011@gmail.com, pjfarley3@earthlink.net, bug-gawk@gnu.org
> 
> >   *** Warning: libtool could not satisfy all declared inter-library
> >   *** dependencies of module mpfr.  Therefore, libtool will create
> >   *** a static module, that should work as long as the dlopening
> >   *** application is linked with the -dlopen flag.
> >   libtool: link: ar cru .libs/mpfr.a .libs/mpfr.o
> >   libtool: link: ranlib .libs/mpfr.a
> >   libtool: link: ( cd ".libs" && rm -f "mpfr.la" && cp -pR "../mpfr.la" 
> > "mpfr.la" )
> >   make[2]: Leaving directory `/d/gnu/gawkextlib/gawk-mpfr-1.1.0'
> >   make[1]: Leaving directory `/d/gnu/gawkextlib/gawk-mpfr-1.1.0'
> > 
> > That sounds like trouble, right?
> 
> It does look concerning. I have not done any testing on MinGW, so I have no
> idea how or if it works on that platform. How did you overcome the gawkextlib
> obstacle?

I just copied gawkextlib.h from the Git repository to the system
include directory.  The configure script looked only for the
gawkextlib.h file, and didn't say anything about any other file(s).
And "./configure --help" says just

    --with-gawkextlib=PATH  Use gawkextlib in PATH

Which is very low on informational value: how am I supposed to know
what gawkextlib is and how should I go about installing it?  INSTALL
is not specific to gawk-mpfr, README doesn't say anything about
dependencies, and gawk-mpfr.info to which README refers doesn't seem
to say anything at all about installation.

> Maybe I should try setting up a MinGW build environment, but I have
> zero experience with MinGW.

I don't think MinGW is the problem.  I think there are some build
dependencies that are assumed, but seem to not be documented anywhere
(or what did I miss?).  Does the library really build on a Unix system
that has nothing on it except Gawk and the tarball you cited, and no
previous gawkextlib installation (whatever that means)?  I very much
doubt that the error from the configure script is specific to MinGW or
MS-Windows in general -- that file must exist for configure to
succeed, but the build instructions say nothing about how to make it
available.