From: cgf AT cygnus DOT com (Christopher Faylor) Subject: Re: gcc --print-file-name: win32 or posix? 23 Dec 1998 18:35:20 -0800 Message-ID: <19981223211411.B27371.cygnus.cygwin32.developers@cygnus.com> References: <199812230227 DOT VAA02263 AT envy DOT delorie DOT com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii To: Mumit Khan , DJ Delorie Cc: cygwin32-developers AT cygnus DOT com On Wed, Dec 23, 1998 at 04:07:07PM -0600, Mumit Khan wrote: >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. I have noted your concern. I'm sorry that I never actually said anything "out loud" about it but it was brought up at a Win32 meeting. >Can you tell us why it was done? I've asked this in the past, but never >did get an answer. I don't understand it either. I think that Geoff made the change but he is on vacation now, so we'll have to wait until he gets back for the definitive 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). I tend to agree. I thought that there might be someone somewhere who actually needs the c:\foo style pathnames. If that's not the case then lets just get rid of the MS-DOS filenames. I think gcc is the only tool that does things this way. Or does ld do this too? -chris