RE: Default compiler behaviour for b19

[Colin Peters <colin@bird.fu.is.saga-u.ac.jp>]

Fergus Henderson[SMTP:fjh@cs.mu.OZ.AU] wrote:
>Geoffrey Noer <noer@cygnus.com> writes:
>
>>Anthony Wesley wrote:
>>> 
>>> Perhaps I am misreading the comments on the gnuwin32 home page, but it
>>> looks like Cygnus are proposing to have "gcc -o foo foo.c" generate
>>> native win32 binaries by default and not link with cygwin.dll. To
>>> compile UNIX-ish tools and link with the cygwin.dll library you will
>>> have to supply an extra command line option.
>>
>>Yes, and this may still happen at some point down the road.
>
>I have to agree with Anthony Wesley that this would be a Bad Idea.

At first I was going to say that either default would be fine if
you could override the default with an environment variable, and
override the environment variable or default with a command line
option. This would give the user maximum flexibility and
convenience.

However, I thought about it a bit, and I have to agree that
'gcc' should by default have the compatibility layer enabled. I
still think you should be able to override the default in the
way above though.

The reason I think gcc should, by default, be UNIX is simply
that all extant shell scripts which call gcc, without any
other options, are basically UNIX-centric. If you are running
one of these shell scripts then you are running in a UNIX-like
environment. The shell script will no doubt include other UNIX
isms. New scripts written with the Win32 port in mind can
include an option to behave natively, but making gcc act
differently by default can only break older scripts and offer
very little benefit to new programmers.

Of course one can, and should, be able to recompile gcc to
target Win32 native with no UNIX compatibility layer, with
the understanding that this retargeted gcc, like any gcc
targeted at a non-UNIX machine, will not always behave as
expected by UNIX scripts or when compiling UNIX code.

Well, that's my opinion, for what it's worth. :-/

Colin.

-- Colin Peters - Saga Univ. Dept. of Information Science
-- colin@bird.fu.is.saga-u.ac.jp - finger for PGP public key
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