Re: MSVC status

[Charles Wilson]

On 8/13/2010 8:50 AM, Peter Rosin wrote:
> Den 2010-08-13 13:45 skrev Christopher Hulbert:
>> Peter: I think you are targeting mingw correct? I am targeting purely
>> native Windows. Is there actually any difference in these? Would it
>> make sense to have a windows host type (e.g. i686-pc-windows and
>> x86_64-pc-windows)?
> 
> From my POV, MinGW is native Windows. In what way isn't it? If we
> invent the host *-windows, what is then $build? If we are on
> MSYS, it will be *-mingw*. If we are on Cygwin, it will be *-cygwin*,
> and we are forever stuck in cross-compiler setups. But MSYS/MinGW
> is happily (well, mostly) running in its faked cross mode, why not
> take advantage of its deception?

There is a difference between $host and $CC; there isn't (and shouldn't
be) a one-to-one correspondence between the two (e.g. you should not
require a different $host triple for every compiler that operates on a
platform).  Since the first compiler for native windows that the
autotools supported was mingw, the triple for native (32bit) windows is
"i?86-pc-mingw32" even if CC=cl and not gcc.

libtool should key its changes for the various compilers ON that
platform (intel cc, cl, or gcc) by the value of $CC. (or $cc_basename,
if you need to strip a target triple off the base compiler name) -- and
not invent new $hosts.

Now, suppose you did this:
 --host=i686-pc-mingw32 --build=i686-pc-cygwin

Well, that's a cross compiler setup. We'll soon have better support for
the oddities that arise when using cross compilers that involve
cygwin|mingw as either $host or $build.  I posted a patch for this some
time ago, but need to revise and repost -- but not until after the
current sysroot fracas is resolved.

Anyway, THEN, the next step would be to test and fix support for
 --host=i686-pc-mingw32 --build=i686-pc-cygwin
CC="some-compiler-we-haven't-thought-of-yet"

--
Chuck