[BuildTools] Problems building with trunk and the MSVC++ compiler

[Lou Hafer]

Ted,

	There are indeed issues with MSVC/cl, and part of this has to do with
obsolete support in autoconf.  If you read through the autoconf macros, you'll
see quite a few comments to the effect that cl support is just a bit dusty. If 
we get really serious about cl, we might want to consider fixing this down in 
the autoconf package and contributing the changes back to the autoconf 
maintainers.

	If you grab the coin.m4 that I pushed up to BuildTools a few days back
(check the messages headed `Testing AC_CREATE_LIBTOOL', in particular the one 
dated December 15th) there's an updated coin.m4 that works on my home system
(cygwin/Win2K/MSVC8). Give it a spin.

	The particular problem you're noticing (cygpath: can't convert empty 
path) is due to a quirk of autoconf AC_REQUIRE. See the second posting from
December 14th. Can't speak directly to the library issue; it may or may not go 
away with the upgraded coin.m4. As far as linking, all C++ linking in autotools 
seems to be handled as calls through the C++ compiler, and this is generally 
what's desired. For what it's worth, the revised coin.m4 mentioned above does 
the proper setup of compiler and linker.

							Lou