Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: darcs vs tla

[Michael Poole]

Adrian Irving-Beer writes:

> On Thu, Nov 18, 2004 at 03:02:57PM -0600, John A Meinel wrote:
> 
> > hackerlab creates a temporary executable to generate an output file
> > and then deletes it. But on cygwin/windows the file ends with a
> > .exe, so rm cannot find it to delete it.
> 
> I know there is no 'gcc contract', but doesn't saying 'ld -o foo' or
> 'gcc -o foo' and getting foo.exe (a) violate the expectation of using
> -o, and (b) break almost every other Makefile out there?
>
> Not saying it's not a problem.  Just confuses me why Cygwin would do
> this.  As I recall, all their system executables end in .exe too,
> although you call them without like in Unix.

Appending .exe is less bad than not appending it, since it is
necessary for the program to run.  The Cygwin environment has some
special cases to append .exe where it may be needed.  Unix-oriented
Makefiles can break, but helpers like Automake know how to work around
the most common problems.

> Does Windows literally only run files with a .exe extension?  I haven't
> used Cygwin or Windows in years.

Windows can run files with other extensions (.com, .cmd, .bat, etc),
but there must be an extension and the extension must be registered
with the OS.  It uses file extensions to identify the interpreter
rather than using magic signatures in the file body.

Michael Poole