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whenever I download MinGW or any version of TDM-GCC, the .lib files become .a and the .dll files became .dll.a files. The issue is that i cannot use TDM-GCC unless I am in the C:\TDM-GCC-64\bin directory, before I had the issue of .lib files being downloaded as .a files this was not a problem. how can I solve this problem? The problem began when I extracted some .lib and .dll files to the lib directory in MinGW. These files are also labeled as "snes9x rom" in the "type" column of the windows explorer menu.

michael
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  • .a files are compiled and archieved. Have a read on [this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5965171/what-is-a-file-with-extension-a). Your problem seems to be the usage of multiple compilers and their requirements for having library files (static or dynamic), which you have mixed up somehow! Try to stick to one compiler at a time. – ha9u63a7 Oct 13 '14 at 09:39
  • before I had this problem, none of the compilers i used had any .a files. – michael Oct 13 '14 at 09:55
  • I suggest you clean up everything and start again. Also, if you could, elaborate the steps you took to install MinGW until the problem starts appearing. If you are looking for a solution, we can help you better if we know how to reproduce it. – ha9u63a7 Oct 13 '14 at 10:00
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    Looks like you didn't download the MinGW stuff for the proper system ... – Serge Ballesta Oct 13 '14 at 10:03
  • I have uninstalled winrar and TDM and Mingw multiple times already. The problem appeared when I downloaded SDL 2.0 with the .tar.gz extensions. I extracted it using winrar and then extracted the .lib files to the lib folder in Mingw and then all the .lib files became .a. – michael Oct 13 '14 at 10:09
  • @SergeBallesta i did everything the mingw "getting started" page old me. – michael Oct 13 '14 at 10:11
  • what should I do to make sure i download the right Mingw stuff? – michael Oct 13 '14 at 10:22
  • @sergeballesta I used the automated installer for minGW. – michael Oct 13 '14 at 10:39
  • as I mentioned before .a files are essentially "Archived" file. You can use it just like .lib files. Delete everything including any env variables that you have created for MinGW. Use the windows 32-bit (or 64-bit if you have x64 machine) installer for MinGW (from Sourceforge). Once you are done, add the `bin` directory of MinGW to your system variables. Try and compile a hello world programme to see if everything is working properly. Once you are done, try and do your thing with either .lib or .a files (but not both!!). See what happens. I linke posix libraries using .a and .lib (separately). – ha9u63a7 Oct 13 '14 at 13:29
  • It does work with .a but I have to navigate to the C:\MinGW\bin to get it to work when before that wasn't a problem – michael Oct 13 '14 at 18:50

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