Re: more gcc/mintlib questions

[Jan Paul Schmidt <Jan.P.Schmidt@mni.fh-giessen.de>]

On Thu, 12 Mar 1998, Yves Pelletier wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, Howard Chu wrote:
> 
> > I like this idea, I just wonder if we can make our naming scheme even
> > more compact. "bc16020.a" seems like an awful lot of junk for "libc,
> > base relative, 16 bit int, 68020 instructions". (OK, I suppose it's
> > better than what I just spelled out.) Or maybe we just have too messy
> > an environment, and we have to live with it. 
> > 
> > We might consider just single-character tokens for 16 bit int and 68020,
> > e.g. 's' for short int, and '2' for 68020 libs. I'm also thinking about
> > putting these in the suffix, instead of the filename, e.g.
> > 	c.a, c.as, c.a2, c.as2
> > 
> > Of course, we need a convention for the order of the tokens... The above
> > is only a suggestion.
> > 
> > Assuming this strategy is acceptable, the base-relative libs could be
> > 	c.b, c.bs, c.b2, c.bs2
> > 
> > (Since really the ".a" suffix is arbitrary, and pretty much a throwaway
> > anyway, it conveys no real information.)

If I see `.a' as extension, I know it is a library. I don't think this is
a good idea.

> > One advantage of this approach is that you don't have to change your
> > "-l" arguments to the linker, (assuming the linker is modified to
> > understand these suffixes) when you change compiler options. (E.g.,
> > you would have to change -lc to -lc020 or whatever, the way we do things
> > now.)
> 
> No major objections...  just wondering about the linker.  It
> would have to be made available at the same time as the new
> libs, to minimize confusion.  Also, if we take your idea a bit
> further, we might want the linker to recognize -m680x0 switches
> and search for the most appropriate library available on the
> system.  For instance, if someone compiles a program with the
> -m68060 switch, perhaps it would be appropriate for the linker
> to first search for a c.a6 library, and then downgrade all the
> way to c.a if necessary.  What do you think?

I think, keep it the way it is and think more about important things for
the library. The majority wouldn't change their setup anyway.

jps