From: murray AT lamar DOT colostate DOT edu (Murray Todd Williams) Subject: Re: Default linker output filename 1 Nov 1996 14:10:34 -0800 Sender: daemon AT cygnus DOT com Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <327A2442.77EAD6A0.cygnus.gnu-win32@lamar.colostate.edu> References: <199610311256 DOT AA14858 AT mail DOT crl DOT com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (X11; I; Linux 2.0.0 i586) Original-To: gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com > > We are thinking about changing the default linker output filename from > > a.out to aout.exe. Can anyone think of any bad consequences that might > > result? > > Why not go all the way towards DOS behavior and create FOO.EXE when you do > "gcc foo.c"? > > -- > Weiqi Gao > weiqigao AT crl DOT com I would think the reason should be that GNU's GCC compiler/platform is not meant to be DOS or act as DOS, but rather to act as UNIX. Personally, it seems to me that there is not all that much effort expended in typing "RENAME a.out foo.exe" or even better, placing a "-o" option in the GCC command. I would be extremely hesitant about changing the default behavior in case someone generates a Makefile that for some crazy reason counts on an a.out file. (Stupid as that would be.) If the default behavior were indeed changed, I would suggest a compiler option that defaulted to the old a.out behavior, thus making it possible to include another parameter in the Makefile and keep the behavior the same. On the other hand (yeah, I'm having a hard time making up my mind) if someone wrote a complex Makefile which involved compiling and then running a program, the Unix defaults would never work because the Makefile would tend to generate a program "foo" instead of "foo.exe" which NT/95 would never run. This behavior might be of much greater concern then a.out vs aout.exe. Murray Todd Williams Colorado State University - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".