Consider naming DLLs built with MinGW as `libfoo.dll`

[nirbheek]

DLLs built with Autotools (which uses MinGW of course) are named libfoo.dll, and other build systems on Windows that use MSVC (like Visual Studio project files or CMake) use foo.dll.

So this is a convenient way to differentiate between DLLs built with MSVC and those built with MinGW, which is convenient for projects that provide binaries built with both toolchains. This is also what Meson does.

Would you like to follow Meson in this or do you prefer sticking with Cargo defaults as to which target platforms prefix lib to the library name?

[lu-zero]

I think would be nice to give the users the choice, that way it should be less confusing. Possibly we could tie more settings to a --meson cli option.

[nirbheek]

Yeah there's other behaviours also that Meson has, such as always naming static libraries libfoo.a even when built with MSVC and import libraries are always foo.lib so that -lfoo works in pkg-config files with GCC, off the top of my head.

AFAICT cargo-c uses foo.lib for static archives and foo.dll.lib for import libraries?

[lu-zero]

We can double check, windows is not a platform I use.

[kmilos]

FWIW, on MinGW, both Autotools and CMake, (and I think also Meson, but I use it less frequently) will indeed stick to the Unix-like convention:

static library: libfoo.a
shared object: libfoo.dll
import lib stub: libfoo.dll.a

P.S. Autotools (and Meson?) will usually also add the SOVERISON as libfoo-42.dll, while CMake won't (unless CMAKE_SHARED_LIBRARY_NAME_WITH_VERSION is explicitly set).

[lu-zero]

Is this still a problem?

[nirbheek]

Yes. We hack around it by renaming the files after install.

[lu-zero]

I guess it is a good time to add this additional bit of logic then

[lu-zero]

@nirbheek do you have time to help me on this?

[amyspark]

Hey @lu-zero , @nirbheek just sent this over to me. I'll be taking a look into it later today.

[lu-zero]

Great! there are a couple of meson-parity issues that I keep postponing since I do not have access to windows... Feel free to message on irc in case.