From: khan AT xraylith DOT wisc DOT edu (Mumit Khan) Subject: Re: gcc --print-file-name: win32 or posix? 23 Dec 1998 14:35:22 -0800 Message-ID: <199812232207.QAA23221.cygnus.cygwin32.developers@modi.xraylith.wisc.edu> References: <199812230227 DOT VAA02263 AT envy DOT delorie DOT com> To: DJ Delorie Cc: cygwin32-developers AT cygnus DOT com DJ Delorie writes: > > If you do "gcc --print-file-name libgcc.a" cygwin's gcc currently > prints the result using Win32 paths. This breaks cygwin's make. We > were just about to change it to print posix paths, but we realized > that it was done this way for a reason, and there are cases where it > makes sense to print win32 paths. I and others (notably Earnie Boyd) have this raised issue in the past without much response from others, so I'm glad we're finally going to deal with it. Can you tell us why it was done? I've asked this in the past, but never did get an answer. > We thought about using -mcygwin or -mmingw to trigger the output type, > but those only work for native gcc's - they won't work if the gcc is > host=cygwin but a different target (the -m options are > target-specific, not host-specific). > > My thought was that if gcc was built for a cygwin host, chances are, > the other tools were also, so posix paths make sense, and if gcc is > built with non-cygwin, chances are the other tools were too, so native > paths make sense. > > Can anyone think of other possible solutions or caveats? My approach may seem a bit harsh, but I believe it's quite reasonable. Folks who want to use Cygwin hosted toolchain for whatever target should expect posix pathnames and use tools that do the right thing. If they want native pathname, they can simply write a simple filter (using cygpath for example) that do the munging for them. If you consider Windows32 to be an embedded target like I do, it all makes sense ;-) I doubt if we can satisfy everybody, so we should just go with the right thing (which is of course always subjective). Regards, Mumit