Source of "Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lfoo" messages

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I know I've had this message a number of times, and I've always wondered
why some libs can be found and others not.  Of course, in cygwin it's
NOT harmless, as win32 dll's can't have undefined symbols.  I think,
though, that I may have (finally!!) found the source of the problem.

These messages are generated by ExtUtils::Liblist::Kid, which verifies
the presence of each library file specified, and if not found, removes
it from the list (and gives that message to warn you).  It appears to
verify presence by looking for the library file, either shared or
static, in the standard lib dirs, plus any specified with -L.  I believe
that this message occurs when the library was only built shared, and
here's why:

First, EU::Liblist::Kid looks for $libname.$so ($so appears to come from
Config, so it should be dll) in the libdirs.  Of course, in cygwin where
.dlls are in $PATH and not in libdirs, then it's never found.  Next, it
looks for a static library.  If there is one, fine, but if the library
was only built shared, all there is in the libdir is the .dll.a import
library, which it doesn't seem to know to look for, and therefore it
claims that it can't find the library (with all the consequences thereof).

Would someone with more perl programming knowledge be able to verify
this, and perhaps propose a patch?  Thanks!


Yaakov

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