Re: [PATCH 4/4] Makefile: Don't pass $(ALL_CFLAGS) to the linker

Ramsay Jones wrote:

I thought that the general scheme was something like:

    - LDFLAGS is for options which only affects the operation of
      the linker (e.g. -L).
    - CPPFLAGS is for options which only affects the operation of
      the C pre-processor (e.g. -I, -D, -U)
    - CFLAGS is for options which only affects the operation of
      the compiler proper.

If an option affects multiple phases, then (one option) is to include
it into each of the above macros to which it applies.

That does make sense.  Perhaps “traditionally” was not the right word;
I was just looking at common practice.  I’ve just never seen -O put
into LDFLAGS, for example, and I think most people would expect
setting CFLAGS=-O0 to affect the linker, too.

Jonathan Nieder wrote:

quoted

I realize that the Makefile does not currently use the terms this way:
making it consistent would require

 . s/BASIC_CFLAGS/BASIC_CPPFLAGS/, except that the

[etc]

quoted

What do you think?

I think I am missing something, since I don't see how this relates to
my patch!

I suspect the problem comes from my unfamiliarity with MSVC.

By analogy with GCC, I assumed that any parameter is intended for the
preprocessor, the linker, or the frontend/both.  In other words, I was
assuming flags for the compiler proper can be safely passed to the
linker, and that /Zi must be for the preprocessor-using stages only.
CFLAGS tends to contain front-end arguments used for all stages of
translation.

What does /Zi do?  Searching online reveals:

 - it means “enable debugging information”
 - weakly implies /debug for the linker
 - overrides /Z7 and /Zd, and is overridden by them
 - is incompatible with /MP
 - is among the prerequisites for /dlp and for /Gm

Maybe clink.pl should use “cl.exe /link” instead of “link.exe” and this
problem would go away.