>>>Regarding dumpbin not being present in the 2003 version, I >>>*think* it's just missing from the free toolkit and that it is >>>still going strong in "the real" releases of Visual Studio. >> >>OK. I just can't test it then. >> >> >>>>Also, there seem to be third-party programs named `dumpbin'. >>>>Does your1> test av oid them or do they work with >> >>your macro? Are >> >>>they in >>> >>>>wide-spread use? (We can just wait till someone reports >> >>a bug, if you >> >>>>don't know; but maybe you do, or I just missed that info.) >>> >>>Hmm, I was not aware of other dumpbins, so if they are similar >>>there might be a problem. >> >>Completely untested (and no idea about trustworthiness): >>http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/coff-dumpbin.html >> >> >>>But, as the test is currently, the located dumpbin must >>>not choke on the -symbols option and it must output a line >>>with both "External" and "some_variable" on it. So false >>>positives seem unlikely to me, but the test can always be >>>hardened.
FYI, the dumpbin.exe provided by Visual C++ is really just a stub that calls link.exe (rather like symlinking unzip as zipinfo). Running "link /dump" has the same effect as running "dumpbin"; so perhaps checking for MS Link is enough - if you have identified the MS linker, you can use it to list symbols (and I imagine libtool may need to know about the linker anyway).
