Re: Visual Studio linking

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-no-personal-reply-please@cygwin.com>]

On Mon, Jun 07, 2004 at 05:13:25PM +0100, Alastair Growcott wrote:
>>A .def file is generated for cygwin when the DLL is built, actually.
>
>I'm not building the Cygwin dll, so I need this step.
>
>>5a) Modify the license of your program to the GNU General Public
>>License, since your binary has now become GPLed, meaning that you must
>>now offer the source code to your sources under the terms of the GPL.
>
>My program is non-distributable.  I am using it to run unit tests
>internally.
>
>I thought that, under the terms of the GPL, if my binary links
>dynamically to the Cygwin DLL, I do NOT have to offer my source code
>up, I only need to ensure that people can use my software against
>future (or past) versions of Cygwin by rebuilding the DLL themselves.
>This includes either distributing the Cygwin DLL source code or
>ditributing a link to somewhere they can obtain it.

>>5) Download crt0.c from the cygwin website and include it in your
>>sources.  Modify it to call my_crt0() instead of cygwin_crt0().

You're including crt0.c in your source code.  That's not linking
dynamically.  You are also using a .def file for your linking rather
than calling LoadLibrary and cousins.

AFAICT, you aren't doing anything differently from what a normal build
of a binary using gcc and would do.

>Or is that the lesser GPL?
>
>Surely the source code will not be GPL'ed if I do not make it or the
>binary publically available!

I suspect that you probably haven't read the GPL FAQ.  This section
is probably pertinent:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCGPLRequireSourcePostedPublic

but the rest should make interesting reading as well.

cgf

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/