Strange files : *.dll.a * .la What are they? ( VLC windows build ) How to use them on Windows if possible?

I wanted to write small streaming software using VLC compoents on windows. So i look for : lib and headers file for VLC on windows. Instead of com开发者_开发问答piling it , to make it faster i looked for ready builds for windows. And i found on: http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/win32/last/

I download it (debug) : Find include file directory and lib. But lib directory contains trange (at least for me) file extensions such as libvlc.la and libvlc.dll.a

What are they? Can i use them in Visual C++?

The .la files are libtool convenience libraries, they're useless and only cause trouble (in this case).

The .a files are (import) libraries for GCC/MinGW, just like .lib for MSVC.

VLC can only be built with GCC, because MSVC lacks the proper C99 support. So all debug info will be generated by and for a GNU toolchain (GCC/Binutils/GDB). If you want to use the proper DLL in Visual Studio, you should be able to create an import library from the included .def file and the dll.