Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 08:13:37 -0500
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please AT cygwin DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Eliminating -mno-cygwin from gcc?
Message-ID: <20070131131337.GA17256@trixie.casa.cgf.cx>
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When I was maintaining cygwin's gcc, I often thought about eliminating
-mno-cygwin and just providing a pure mingw cross compiler in the
distribution.  I really don't know why it wasn't done that way to begin
with.  I have vague recollections of arguing for this when -mno-cygwin
was first introduced by Geoff Noer but apparently I wasn't very
persuasive.

I know that this will probably be another "Death of Cygwin predicted"
experience but I really can't see any benefit in the current
arrangement.  The code which handles -mno-cygwin in gcc (which, for the
most part, I wrote) is ugly and non-foolproof and binutils support is
not great.

How about if we eliminate -mno-cygwin from future releases and either
provide our own mingw cross-tools or wrap the offerings from mingw.org?
This would mean that instead of saying 'gcc -mno-cygwin', you'd say:
'i686-mingw-gcc' which would, I know, make a few computers spontaneously
self-destruct however, I really don't think that the -mno-cygwin belongs
in gcc.  No other port of gcc has anything like this.

If we REALLY wanted to preserve -mno-cygwin, we could do so as a shell
script wrapper for gcc but, personally, I think I'd rather just tell
people to use the cross-compiler.

cgf

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