Re: Texinfo 7.2.90 build with mingw.org's MinGW: testing and installation

> Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2026 20:33:33 +0100
> From: [email protected]
> Cc: Gavin Smith <[email protected]>, [email protected]
> 
> > Since the tests run with Terxinfo uninstalled, I wonder whether the
> > test suite harness sets things up so as to find and load the DLLs
> > just built.  Showing that as part of the test would go a long way
> > towards flagging any issues with finding the DLLs, and will also
> > indicate which parts of the code were actually tested -- the Perl code
> > or the equivalent C code.  Right now, I have no idea.  And looking in
> > config.log and Makefile's doesn't help, because I already know the
> > configure script concluded the extensions could be built, and I also
> > know that they were in fact built.  I just don't know whether they
> > were used when running the test suite.
> 
> If you set TEXINFO_XS=debug in the environment, you will see all the
> XS modules and XS functions (when the whole module is not overriden, but
> some functions are) that are loaded and whether it failed or it was a
> success.

OK, I will try using that next time.  But won't TEXINFO_XS=debug also
show a lot of unrelated stuff, which will flood the terminal with
things I'm not interested in?

> > Which brings me to the installation.  I've just run "make install",
> > and I see that various libtexinfo*.dll DLLs are installed in
> > $prefix/lib/bin.
> 
> That is somewhat unexpected.  In tta/C/Makefile.am, there is
> 
> converterlibdir = $(libdir)/$(CONVERTER)
> xsdir = $(converterlibdir)
> 
> and the libraries are in xs_LTLIBRARIES, and therefore should be
> installed in $(libdir)/texi2any, since CONVERTER=texi2any.
> 
> xs_LTLIBRARIES += libtexinfo.la

I think the reason is libtool.  It "knows" that shared libraries on
Windows need to be installed in the 'bin' subdirectory, not in the
'lib' subdirectory as on Posix systems.

So I guess this calls for some Makefile wizardry, to make sure
libtexinfo*.dll libraries end up in lib/texi2any/ instead.

> >  (Strangely, ctexi2any.exe,
> > which I presumed will load them, is not installed.) Are the DLLs
> > loaded by explicit dlopen calls, which use their full absolute file
> > names?
> 
> Something like that, yes.  The libtool .la files are used on some
> platforms to find the file names to dlopen.

Does Perl code use the *.la files?  Because AFAIK libtool is not
involved in loading the DLL libraries on Windows at run time.

> If the .la files are not
> found, the module is dlopened anyway, and it works in platforms that
> have rpath or the like, possibly with libtool help and find libraries
> without a need to preload through dlopen.

Windows doesn't have rpath.

> > Another question related to "make install" is why are the *.dll.a
> > files installed in lib/texi2any/ ?  These are the so-called "import
> > libraries", which are needed on Windows to link applications against
> > shared libraries.  But there's no feature in Texinfo that needs to
> > allow other applications to be linked against the DLLs and XS
> > extensions produced by the build, is there?
> 
> These are possibly unneeded.  But I think that they are installed by
> libtool, as we do not install them ourselves.  But maybe they are needed
> for the C implementation of texi2any?

No.  The import libraries are only used by the linker at link time.

> >  The same goes to the *.la
> > files -- they are only needed for linking against the libraries (and
> > that is not Windows-specific); so why are they installed?
> 
> As I said above, it is probably needed to find the locations of the
> libtexinfo* libraries and to load them by Texinfo::XSLoader.

So Texinfo::XSLoader accesses the *.la files?