Re: problems building GNU gettext 0.18.1.1 on MinGW / MSYS

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

Erik Faye-Lund wrote:
> I'm working on building gettext for the msysGit project, so we can
> have a localized Git for Windows. I've tried to build GNU gettext the
> following way:
> 
> $ ./configure --prefix=/mingw --enable-threads=win32 --enable-relocatable && 
> make
> 
> The configure script completes (config.log attached), and make starts
> running. After a while the build errors out with the following output:
> 
> /bin/sh ../libtool  --tag=CC   --mode=link gcc -std=gnu99  -g -O2 `:
> /mingw/bin` -Wl,--disable-auto-import -o msgcmp.exe msgcmp-msgcmp.o
> msgcmp-msgl-fsearch.o libgettextsrc.la   gettext.res
> libtool: link: gcc -std=gnu99 -g -O2 -Wl,--disable-auto-import -o
> .libs/msgcmp.exe msgcmp-msgcmp.o msgcmp-msgl-fsearch.o gettext.res
> ./.libs/libgettextsrc.a -L/mingw/lib
> /src/gettext/gettext-0.18.1.1/gettext-tools/gnulib-lib/.libs/libgettextlib.a
> /src/gettext/gettext-0.18.1.1/gettext-tools/intl/.libs/libintl.a
> /mingw/lib/libiconv.dll.a -L/mingw/lib
> msgcmp-msgcmp.o: In function `compare':
> C:\msysgit\src\gettext\gettext-0.18.1.1\gettext-tools\src/msgcmp.c:478:
> undefined reference to `_imp__po_charset_ascii'

gettext's README.woe32 recommends Cygwin as a build environment for mingw
binaries, not MSYS.

If you intend to continue on MSYS, then the place to look at is whether
the mechanism for exporting the global variables from the DLLs are
working?
  1) Are libgettextlib and libgettextsrc being built as shared libraries?
  2) Is the gettextlib-exports.o or gettextsrc-exports.o file, respectively,
     being included in the link of these shared libraries?
  3) Do these object files export the necessary symbols?
  4) Is there no confusion between _imp__xx and __imp__xx?
For details of this mechanism, see the gettext/gettext-tools/woe32dll/export.h
file.

Bruno