[Mingw-cross-env-list] trouble with libz.a and other libraries

[Natalie Tasman]

I am trying to build libarchive 2.8.3, which uses an autotools and
supports mingw, under the most recent dev version of mingw-cross-env.
Other autotools projects are working under my cross-env setup, but I'm
having trouble getting a useful build of libarchive.

Please note: I don't know if this is an issue with mingw-cross-env, or
with libarchive's ./configure (which as far as I know is tested on
mingw but not under cross-compiling for mingw.)

Unless I explicitly limit the  libarchive ./configure using
--without-zlib (and so for all other dependencies: --without-bz2lib,
etc) I get the follow error messages and get a libarchive.a and
libarchive.la that I *cannot* link to from my other programs with
mingw-cross-env.  However if I *do* disable these library
dependencies, I get .a, .la, and .dll.a-- and then *can* use this
libarchive with other mingw-cross-env-built projects-- but then cannot
use libarchive to open .tgz files.

Thanks,

Natalie

*** Warning: linker path does not have real file for library -lz.*** I
have the capability to make that library automatically link in when
*** you link to this library.  But I can only do this if you have a
*** shared version of the library, which you do not appear to have
*** because I did check the linker path looking for a file starting
*** with libz and none of the candidates passed a file format test
*** using a file magic. Last file checked: /path/to/mingw-cross-env/usr/lib
/gcc/i686-pc-mingw32/4.5.0/../../../../i686-pc-mingw32/lib//libz.a
*** The inter-library dependencies that have been dropped here will be
*** automatically added whenever a program is linked with this library
*** or is declared to -dlopen it.
*** Since this library must not contain undefined symbols,
*** because either the platform does not support them or
*** it was explicitly requested with -no-undefined,
*** libtool will only create a static version of it.