mingw toolset and command-line length limitation problem

From: Vaclav Slavik (gclbb-jamboost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-10-15 15:18:57

Hello,

I'm experiencing a nasty problem with Boost.build and Mingw32 on my 
Windows98 box. Even a small project reaches command line length limit 
when building a DLL (because the rule for DLLs is not piecemeal one, 
unlike the one for static libs):
"""
mingw-Link-action actions too long (max 1023):

g++ 
-Wl,--exclude-symbols,_bss_end__:_bss_start__:_data_end__:_data_start__ 
-Wl,--out-implib,objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\upf.lib 
-g -shared -mthreads -o 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\upf.dll" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\classinfo.obj" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\contexts.obj" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\direnum.obj" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\dll_loader.obj" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\manager.obj" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\marchaller.obj" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\typeinfo.obj" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\upfmain.obj" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\condition.obj" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\thread.obj" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\mutex.obj" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\xtime.obj" 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\exceptions.obj" 
-Wl,-rpath-link,.
"""

As you can see, I am trying to build very small library, the linker is 
not passed million object files as its input. I think there are two 
problems here:

1) Windows command line limitation, which nobody here can do anything 
about (or maybe it only applies to commands executed via command.com 
and if bjam executed g++ itself (i.e. by execing "g++ ..." and not 
'command.com g++ ..."), it wouldn't apply?

2) Boost.build generates excessively long filenames (viz 
"objs.tmp\upf.dll\mingw\debug\runtime-link-dynamic\threading-multi\exceptions.obj") 
and cmd line is therefore exhausted way too quickly.

Is there some workaround/fix for this problem? I could globally 
replace e.g. "runtime-link" by "rtlnk" in Boost.build files, but it 
would a) only help (maybe!) me with my project, it would not help 
anything larger), and b) it would be at the cost of Jamfiles 
readibility...

Thanks,
Vaclav Slavik