Hi! When you write
lib_LIBRARIES = libhello.a you express the desire to build an "hello" archive. Virtually everywhere such an archive is expected to be named, tada, libhello.a Enter Windows. When using any and all toolchains not originating from GNU, such an archive is expected to be named hello.lib instead. Anyway, at least this is the case for Microsoft tools and I think the other major players follows MS on this. Sure, it still works to have libraries named libhello.a with MS tools (since the linker assumes that files with unknown extensions are object files, and archives happen to fit), but it *feels* wrong and non-native. Besides, Libtool creates hello.lib and hello-0.dll when it builds Libtool libraries using MS tools. Automake ought to also follow the naming convention of the platform. So, since nothing is impossible, the question is how impossible it would be to beat Automake into creating hello.lib from the above rule? Then there's the problem with other mentions of libhello.a, such as in build rules and dependencies for other libraries. The only way I can see this working is to create something like @libhello_a@ in Makefile.in for all mentions of libhello.a in Makefile.am, and then have configure replace that with libhello.a or hello.lib when it creates the final Makefile. But that will probably crash and burn when conditionals and variables etc are entered into the mix... Thoughts? Cheers, Peter
