Bug #65586 for true: true does not compile on ActivePerl 5.10.1 Build 1007

I did some more digging into this problem today. Here's what i found: (Please forgive me for being very wordy and stating obvious things, i'm not experienced with C.) undefined reference to `hook_op_check' undefined reference to `op_annotation_group_free' These two indicate that the linker didn't load needed libraries. Grepping through site/lib indicated that it needed: c:\Perl\site\lib\auto\B\Hooks\OP\Annotation\Annotation.dll and c:\Perl\site\lib\auto\B\Hooks\OP\Check\Check.lib Why it doesn't find these is somewhat obvious: The makefile never tries to load them: C:\MinGW\bin\g++.exe -o blib\arch\auto\true\true.dll -Wl,--base-file - Wl,dll.base -mdll -L"C:\Perl\lib\CORE" true.o C:\Perl\lib\CORE \perl510.lib -lkernel32 -luser32 -lgdi32 -lwinspool -lcomdlg32 - ladvapi32 -lshell32 -lole32 -loleaut32 -lnetapi32 -luuid -lws2_32 -lmpr -lwinmm -lversion -lodbc32 -lodbccp32 -lcomctl32 -lmsvcrt dll.exp After some digging into ExtUtils::MakeMaker it turns out that this is because ExtUtils::Liblist::_win32_ext only tries to find libraries ending on ".a", thanks to $Config{lib_ext}. I'm not really sure why this is. I also couldn't find a way to get around this. So what i did is generate the makefile and change the LDLOADLIBS parameter in it to look like this: -L"c:\Perl\site\lib\auto\B\Hooks\OP\Check" -L"c:\Perl\site\lib\auto\B \Hooks\OP\Annotation" -lCheck -lAnnotation -lkernel32 -luser32 -lgdi32 - lwinspool -lcomdlg32 -ladvapi32 -lshell32 -lole32 -loleaut32 -lnetapi32 -luuid -lws2_32 -lmpr -lwinmm -lversion -lodbc32 -lodbccp32 -lcomctl32 - lmsvcrt I added the two directories of BHO Check and Annotation, as well as their library names. This made dmake succeed and compile: https:// gist.github.com/842189 Doing dmake test afterwards first resulted in an error: true.dll could not find dll.exp.dll. Inspecting true.dll it turned out that it expected 'op_annotate' and friends from dll.exp.dll. Since these are actually in Annotate.dll, which is usually found here: c:\Perl\site\lib\auto\B\Hooks\OP\Annotation\Annotation.dll I copied and renamed it over to blib\arch\auto\true\dll.exp.dll and ran the tests again. This time they passed. As such, this is not an issue of the module not being able to work on Windows, but rather ExtUtils::* being odd. Again, if i can do anything to help, just ask and i'll try my best. :)

Thanks for your detailed analysis. Unfortunately, as you say, there's not a lot I can do about this in true. Could you try raising it upstream, either as an ExtUtils::Depends or ExtUtils::MakeMaker issue? Possibly related: https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=45432 https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=21430

On Thu Feb 24 09:43:57 2011, MITHALDU wrote: Show quoted text
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If you're using ActivePerl you should try "ppm install true" from the command line (with the ActivePerl bin directory in your path, of course). The true module is available pre-compiled for most platforms: http://code.activestate.com/ppm/true/ Hope this helps.

Did some more digging, had input from Jan and slept over the matter. Thus, new findings and thoughts: ExtUtils::Depends was and is working perfectly fine. My local system was missing Annotation.(a|lib). I have no idea why and cannot reproduce the matter. It's also not very important at the moment, for the following reason: I was able to modify the Makefile.PL of true.pm in such a way that it can compile and test fine without any changes needed to EUMM. The logic is pretty simple: MinGW does not care whether the linker library is a .a or .lib, EU::Depends doesn't care either, it'll pick up on either one existing and send EUMM working parameters. Only EUMM is being a stick in the mud by insisting on .a. So, the solution is for Makefile.PL to check for the dependencies found by EU::Depends whether a .a file or a .lib file exists, and then to copy any .libs to .a if it's running under ActivePerl. I've created a pull request to that effect: https://github.com/ chocolateboy/true/pull/3 I'll still check the current state of EUMM on github and patch Liblist::Kid if necessary, but at least with this change we can get rolling immediately for true.pm and perl5i.

Great! Thanks for all your work on this. If there's a delay in landing the EUMM fix, for any reason, please ping me and I'll apply and release your workaround.

Thanks a lot. Sadly i am an idiot and forgot to test a certain situation, so it's still failing. I'll be opening another pull request on github soonish.