Should crate set PATH=lib_dir on Windows?

[reznikmm]

I've tried to use Matreshka library with alire on msys2 Windows shell. It seems it works fine, but compiled test executable is unable to file matreshka *.DLL's.

So, my question is: Should matreshka crate export PATH environment on windows or we could invent something in alire to deal with this common Windows specific problem?

[mosteo]

Hi Maxim, thanks for the report. There's a proposal about setting env vars in #345. I guess that would do for this case?

[reznikmm]

It seems #345 talks about environment during crate building, while here we need an environment to be used after the build (if this difference matters). May be to be emitted with alr setenv. Also I don't know how to calculate the value of the PATH, in my case it's <current_dir>/alire/build/alire/cache/dependencies/matreshka_league_18.1.0_4fab6c03/.libs/.

[mosteo]

Yup, that should be emitted by alr setenv and also be used by alr build/alr run. The paths should be specified as relative to the crate somehow, so in your case you would use (for example) `"$crate_root/.libs".

At present we don't distinguish building and running contexts; neither testing/releasing. I guess that's something that may be necessary eventually.

[reznikmm]

So, each crate, that provides DLL-s on Windows should export PATH environment variable to point place where DLL-s are located, right?

[mosteo]

Yes. You can set paths relative to your crate directory by using ${CRATE_ROOT} in the manifest, see the entry on environment.

Furthermore, in the master branch you can use alr exec -- your_command to run any script or executable within the same environment printed by alr printenv.

I'm closing this one now as #452 implemented the required functionality for this to work.