Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 16:11:33 +0900 (JST)
Message-Id: <20051031.161133.123928805.garrigue at math.nagoya-u.ac.jp>
To: robertr at rftp.com
Cc: lablgtk at math.nagoya-u.ac.jp
Subject: Re: DLL import lib and new LablGTK distribution?
From: Jacques Garrigue <garrigue at math.nagoya-u.ac.jp>
In-Reply-To: <4365B422.8060705 at rftp.com>
References: <4365B422.8060705 at rftp.com>
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From: Robert Roessler <robertr at rftp.com>

> So, with the 2.6 distribution, where am I supposed to come up with the 
> dlllablgtk2.lib file?  Since it is used with the DLL, which is used by 
> bytecode OCaml programs, shouldn't it be included in a "binary" 
> distribution?
> 
> Back in June/July, you had agreed that this should be part of a 
> standard "make install" - and the Makefile reflects this... so was 
> this just an oversight?
> 
> Yes, of course I can go back to doing full builds of LablGTK, but I 
> assume that the intent of making the "binary" distribution is to avoid 
> that (unless required for native linking)? :)

I thought a bit about it, but I finally concluded that this was not
the goal of the binary distribution. It is intended for ocaml
programmers, not for C hackers :-)
More precisely, you only need dlllablgtk2.lib if you want to create
another C stub library depending on dlllablgtk2.dll. In such a case
you will also need header files, etc...
On the other hand you don't need it if you just want to link a
program, even if this program uses other libraries distributed
as binary. See for instance the lablrsvg package for that.

By the way, it appears do be very easy to recreate an export library
from a dll, using pexport. See the details here
  http://mingw.org/mingwfaq.shtml#faq-msvcdll
So even if you don't have it, you still have it.

Jacques