Hi! I have been wondering when I was going to run into this problem, and now it has happened (in the Libtool testsuite, tests/demo-deplibs.test).
Automake has rules for creating static libraries like so (taken from that test case): EXTRA_LIBRARIES = libhell0.a libhell0_a_SOURCES = libhell0_a_LIBADD = hello.$(OBJEXT) foo.$(OBJEXT) That will create rules to create libhell0.a. The test case then has rules for consuming that library, like so: EXTRA_LTLIBRARIES = libhell1.la libhell2.la libhell1_la_SOURCES = hell1.c libhell1_la_LIBADD = -L. -lhell0 libhell1_la_LDFLAGS = -no-undefined -rpath $(libdir) libhell1_la_DEPENDENCIES = libhell0.a libhell2_la_SOURCES = hell2.c libhell2_la_LIBADD = -L. -lhell0 libhell2_la_LDFLAGS = -no-undefined -rpath $(libdir) libhell2_la_DEPENDENCIES = libhell0.a "-L. -lhell0" is the key here. That is expected to pick up libhell0.a, also notice the *_DEPENDENCIES, which lists the expected library file name explicitly. Now, that was all familiar territory, enter MS tools... MS tools do not expect libraries to end with .a, and the convention is to not prefix the library name with lib. Which is why the compile script, when used as MSVC wrapper, translates -lhell0 into hell0.lib (and not libhell0.a). Side note, Libtool creates static archives with the hell0.lib form for MSVC. compile *could* be extended to also look for the libhell0.a form, but that is not really pretty, the compiler driver will say stuff like: $ cl -nologo hell.obj libhell0.a cl : Command line warning D9024 : unrecognized source file type 'libhell0.a', object file assumed It works though, so that's the easy out I suppose. But me not like. Libraries should simply not be named libhell0.a on this platform. Would it be possible for Automake to create static libraries of the hell0.lib form, when it sees "*_LIBRARIES = libhell0.a"? Since there might be 3rd party dependencies assuming the libhell0.a form, it might be good if Automake also copied the hell0.lib file to libhell0.a after creating libraries of the hell0.lib form to satisfy those dependencies. (Or a symlink might suffice?) Cheers, Peter
