Re: Found a libtool issue (vas: Avoid gawkextlib as a separate shared library)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: aschorr@telemetry-investments.com, arnold@skeeve.com, bug-gawk@gnu.org
> From: Manuel Collado <mcollado2011@gmail.com>
> Date: Thu, 19 May 2022 17:55:21 +0200
> 
> >> *** Warning: linker path does not have real file for library -lgawkextlib.
> >> *** I have the capability to make that library automatically link in when
> >> *** you link to this library.  But I can only do this if you have a
> >> *** shared version of the library, which you do not appear to have
> >> *** because I did check the linker path looking for a file starting
> >> *** with libgawkextlib and none of the candidates passed a file format test
> >> *** using a file magic. Last file checked: /c/gnu/lib/libgawkextlib.dll.a
> >
> > This seems to say that libtool didn't like your libgawkextlib.dll.a
> > import library for some reason or other.  I have no idea why that
> > happened.
> 
> Well, the libtool script generated while building gawk-mpfr contains the 
> following:
> 
> ----------------
> #! /bin/sh
> # Guess values for system-dependent variables and create Makefiles.
> # Generated by GNU Autoconf 2.69 for Gawk MPFR Extension 1.1.0.
> [....]
> *** Warning: the command libtool uses to detect shared libraries,
> *** $file_magic_cmd, produces output that libtool cannot recognize.
> *** The result is that libtool may fail to recognize shared libraries
> *** as such.  This will affect the creation of libtool libraries that
> *** depend on shared libraries, but programs linked with such libtool
> *** libraries will work regardless of this problem.  Nevertheless, you
> *** may want to report the problem to your system manager and/or to
> *** bug-libtool@gnu.org
> --------------

I don't see this in my build.

The shell script function that is the value of $file_magic_cmd invokes
the 'file.exe' command -- do you have an MSYS version of that? or a
MinGW version of that?

> So perhaps it is necessary to upgrade a standard MinGW platform with 
> newer tools from third-party sources. In order to successfully build 
> gawkextlib extensions that require the gawkextlib base library.

When you build the extension, autotools shouldn't be invoked, because
the tarball comes with a ready configure script and config.h.in file.
The autotools are run when the tarball is being prepared, not at build
time.

Also, my reading of that warning is not that the bug is in autotools.
The commands used for this are not related to autotools, see above.