The latest autobuild for windows
http://autobuild.puredata.info/auto-build/latest/Pd-0.42.5-extended-windowsxp-i386.exe
now installs pd.a as pd.lib and that seems to work OK to link against with MSVisualC++2008ExpressEdition, so the .def file that is also installed is probably redundant.

I notice in the log that moocow stuff fails when -lpd is used, although -lpd works OK for pd.dll and others:

gcc -DPD -I/home/pd/auto-build/pd-extended/pd/src -Wall -W -ggdb -I/home/pd/auto-build/pd-extended/Gem/src -mms-bitfields -DMSW -DNT -D'O_NONBLOCK=1' -D'srand48(n)=srand((n))' -D'drand48()=((double)rand()/RAND_MAX)' -D'bzero(p,n)=memset(p,0,n)' -L/home/pd/auto-build/pd-extended/pd/bin -L/home/pd/auto-build/pd-extended/pd/obj -L/sw/lib -shared -L/home/pd/auto-build/pd-extended/externals/moocow/extended/build.moo/bin -L/home/pd/auto-build/pd-extended/externals/moocow/extended/build.moo/obj -o locale.dll locale.o -lpd -lwsock32 -lpthreadGC2 -lkernel32 -luser32 -lgdi32 -lregex

c:\MinGW\bin\..\lib\gcc\mingw32\3.4.5\..\..\..\..\mingw32\bin\ld.exe: cannot find -lpd

Maybe the path is wrong? I don't think it wants to find libpd.a instead of pd.a, since
in makefile.mingw, pd.dll is built with --out-implib=pd.a, then pd.exe uses -lpd without any errors.

Martin