File: libtool.info,  Node: Native MinGW File Name Conversion,  Next: Cygwin/Windows File Name Conversion,  Prev: File Name Conversion Failure,  Up: File name conversion

15.3.6.2 Native MinGW File Name Conversion
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MSYS is a Unix emulation environment for Windows, and is specifically
designed such that in normal usage it _pretends_ to be MinGW or native
Windows, but understands Unix-style file names and paths, and supports
standard Unix tools and shells.  Thus, "native" MinGW builds are
actually an odd sort of cross-compile, from an MSYS Unix emulation
environment "pretending" to be MinGW, to actual native Windows.

   When an MSYS shell launches a native Windows executable (as opposed
to other _MSYS_ executables), it uses a system of heuristics to detect
any command-line arguments that contain file names or paths.  It
automatically converts these file names from the MSYS (Unix-like)
format, to the corresponding Windows file name, before launching the
executable.  However, this auto-conversion facility is only available
when using the MSYS runtime library.  The wrapper executable itself is a
MinGW application (that is, it does not use the MSYS runtime library).
The wrapper executable must set ‘PATH’ to, and call ‘_spawnv’ with,
values that have already been converted from MSYS format to Windows.
Thus, when libtool writes the source code for the wrapper executable, it
must manually convert MSYS paths to Windows format, so that the Windows
values can be hard-coded into the wrapper executable.