Why can't ld called from MSYS find (existing static) library when arguments are read from a response #file containing backslashes? - path

Question

This is basically the same issue as in mingw ld cannot find some library which is exist in the search path, MinGW linker can't find MPICH2 libraries - and I'm aware that there are heaps of posts on StackOverflow regarding the issue of static and dynamic linking with MinGW - but I couldn't find anything that explains how I can troubleshoot.
I am building a project with a huge linker command like (via g++) on MinGW, in a MSYS2 shell (git-bash.exe). The process fails with, among others:
/z/path/to/../../../../i686-w64-mingw32/bin/ld.exe: cannot find -lssl
I add -Wl,--verbose to the g++ linker call (to be passed to ld), and I can see for the -L/z/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw -lssl:
...
attempt to open /z/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw/libssl.a failed
...
/z/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw/ssl.dll failed
attempt to open /z/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw\libssl.a failed
...
But this is weird, because the file exists?
$ file /z/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw/libssl.a
/z/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw/libssl.a: current ar archive
(... and it was built with the same compiler on the same machine)?
Weirdly, once it attempts to open with forward slash .../libssl.a, once with backslash ...\libssl.a - but at least the first path checks out in a bash shell, as shown above?
It gets even worse if I try to specify -l:libssl.a -- or if I specify -L/z/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw -Wl,-Bstatic -lssl -- instead; then all attempts to open are with a backslash:
...
attempt to open /z/path/to/scripts/other/build/openssl/build/mingw/lib\libssl.a failed
attempt to open /z/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw\libssl.a failed
...
To top it all off, if I look it up manually through the command line using ld, it is found ?!:
$ ld -L/z/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw -lssl --verbose
attempt to open Z:/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw/libssl.dll.a failed
attempt to open Z:/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw/ssl.dll.a failed
attempt to open Z:/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw/libssl.a succeeded
Does anyone have an idea why this happens, and how can I get ld to finally find these libraries? Or rather - how can I troubleshoot, and understand why these libraries are not found, when they exist at the paths where ld tries to open them?
OK, found something more - not sure if this is a bug; but my problem is that I'm actually reading arguments from a file (otherwise I get g++: Argument list too long). So, to simulate that:
$ echo " -Wl,--verbose -L/z/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw -lssl -lcrypto " > tmcd3
$ g++ #tcmd3 2>&1 | grep succeeded | grep ssl
# nothing
$ g++ `cat tcmd3` 2>&1 | grep succeeded | grep ssl
attempt to open Z:/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw/libssl.a succeeded
attempt to open Z:/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw/libcrypto.a succeeded
... it turns out, if the very same arguments are fed on the command line, then static library lookup succeeds - but if the arguments are read from file through the # at-sign, then static library lookup fails?! Unfortunately, I cannot use on my actual project, since even with cat, I'd still get g++: Argument list too long ... So how can I fix this?

Answer 1

MSYS has special handling of directories as arguments when they are used in the shell. This translates e.g. /<drive_letter>/blabla to the proper Windows style paths. This is to accomodate Unix programs that don't handle Z: style directory root.
What you see here is that MSYS isn't performing this interpretation for string read from a file. When you think about it, it's very logical, but as you have experienced first-hand, also sometimes annoying.
Long story short: don't put Unix style paths in files with command arguments. Instead, pass them through e.g. cygpath -w, which works in MSYS2 (which should be the MSYS that Git for Windows 2+ comes with).

Answer 2

Ok, with some more experiments, I noticed that:
-L/z/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw, the Unix path specification, tends to fail - while if we specify the same, except starting with a Windows drive letter, that is:
-LZ:/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw, then things work - also from an arguments file with # at-sign:
$ echo " -Wl,--verbose -LZ:/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw -lssl -lcrypto " > tmcd3
$ g++ #tcmd3 2>&1 | grep succeeded | grep ssl
attempt to open Z:/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw/libssl.a succeeded
attempt to open Z:/path/to/libs/openssl/lib/mingw/libcrypto.a succeeded
I guess, since the shell is MSYS2/git-bash.exe, entering full POSIX paths on the shell with /z/... is not a problem, because the shell will convert them - but in a file, there is nothing to convert them, so we must use Windows/MingW convention to specify them...