distutils on win32 with link.exe -- use dlls?

[David Bolen]

John Hunter <jdhunter at ace.bsd.uchicago.edu> writes:

> Is there a macro or compile flag or other setting to inform distutils
> to look for the DLLS of the required libraries rather than the *.lib
> files?

Under Windows, even if your resultant binary is going to use DLLs, you
need to link against the export libraries provided for those DLLs.
The export libraries only contain the external entry points into the
DLLs and a reference to the DLL, but they are still separate .lib
files that are necessary to build code to run against the DLLs.  Thus,
anyone who provides DLLs for other source to use should also be
providing the matching .libs (or if you are building the DLLs from
source, the build process should also create matching .lib files).

-- David