Re: non-static ".a" files? (mingw-pthreads)

If a mingw package build produces a ".a" file that is not usable as a static library, is there any reason to include that ".a" file in the package at all?

As far as I'm concerned the goal should be that all static libraries should have the extension '.a' while import libraries (for linking against shared libraries) should have the extension '.dll.a'. All autoconf/libtool based packages are already following this schema. Packages which aren't autoconf/libtool based may need some additional changes to follow this schema. The package mingw-pthreads is one of those packages. Renaming the current .a file (which is actually an import library) to .dll.a should be possible without introducing any side effects. This way you can provide both shared and static libraries without introducing conflicts This trick was also done in the mingw-qt package and it works without issues. The Fedora MinGW Testsuite [1][2] also contains testcases which test specifically for the gcc behaviour of '.a' and '.dll.a' files, the gcc -static argument and the various libraries which are provided by the mingw-qt package. Kind regards, Erik van Pienbroek [1]: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/mingw/2011-November/004261.html [2]: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW/Testsuite _______________________________________________ mingw mailing list mingw(a)lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/mingw