Re: [Mingw-cross-env-list] Status of build with shared libraries

[Tony Theodore]

On 21/10/2013, at 12:32 AM, Peter Rockett <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> is anyone really going to want multiple toolchains simultaneously?
> 
> Erm... yes. For different projects. Two distinct toolchains imposes a 
> maintenance  burden on users.

I'm not sure what the maintenance burden is, you just run mxe as normal and end 
up with some prefixed compilers. So far, I've looked at building these in 
separate phases so the toolchains will be distinct. You will have either:

i686-pc-mingw32.static-gcc
i686-pc-mingw32.shared-gcc

in your PATH, or

export PATH=~/mxe/usr/static/bin
i686-pc-mingw32-gcc

export PATH=~/mxe/usr/shared/bin
i686-pc-mingw32-gcc

to select the variant. Static and shared libs can probably be built in a single 
pass (I don't have much experience with this), but the threading/exception 
variants can't. It's the same as deciding against multi-lib compilers when 
introducing 64-bit support - if we did that we wouldn't now be able to support 
multiple runtimes. I guess it's a trade-off between extra build times and 
future flexibility so you can swap toolchains by changing a variable.

The other option of a single toolchain (along the lines `make LIB_TYPE=shared 
…`) will mean users have to do the directory and PATH management themselves if 
they want to use different variants side-by-side. 

Cheers,

Tony