Question about static and shared libraries and their usage in a binary on Windows in a autotools project

Vincent Torri <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.gnu.libtool.general
Message-ID <CAMq1adqt5UU70fcoMj93wo+=RTK=q0YEvGFASTPb+RP0ZOYVzQ@mail.gmail.com>
Hello

I contribute to an autotools project. The tree is :

src/lib/libfoo  <--- the library, with libfoo.h declaring the public symbols
src/bin/bar  <-- the binary which uses libfoo and includes libfoo.h in
its source files

I want to create the library 'libfoo' on Windows. I also want to
declare public symbols with __declspec(dllexport) and
__declspec(dllimport) in a macro that I call MY_API in libfoo.h

Thanks to DLL_EXPORT that libtool is passing to the preprocessor when
compiling the library 'libfoo', there is no problem to compile libfoo.
MY_API is correctly defined either when I build the static lib, or the
shared lib, or both.

The problem I am facing is when I build the 'bar' binary. On Windows:

1) if 'lifoo' is built as a shared library, when I include libfoo.h in
'bar' source files, MY_API must be defined as __declspec(dllimport)
2) if 'libfoo' is built as a static library, when I include libfoo.h
in 'bar' source files, MY_API must be defined as nothing

but, as far as I know, when I compile 'bar', I couldn't find a way to
know if 'libfoo' has been compiled as a static library or as a shared
library. I have looked at the 'bar' source files gcc calls, and they
are the same in both cases (libfoo compiled as a static or shared
lib). So I don't know how I can correctly define my macro MY_API.

Here is, for now, my macro:

#if defined(_WIN32) || defined(__CYGWIN__)
# ifdef FOO_BUILD  // defined when building 'libfoo'
#  ifdef DLL_EXPORT
#   warning "BUILD DLL"
#   define MY_API __declspec(dllexport)
#  else
#   warning "BUILD STATIC"
#   define MY_API
#  endif
# else
#  warning "IMPORT DLL"
#  define MY_API __declspec(dllimport)
# endif

in the last #else, I don't know what to do to correctly manage MY_API
for my problem above

One solution would be : never compile 'lbfoo' as a static lib ("DLL
are good on Windows"), but I would like to support both static and
shared libraries.

Does someone know how to solve my issue ? (I hope I've been clear enough...)

thank you

Vincent Torri
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.