Re: [Tinycc-devel] Re: TCC:cannot find -l"xyz.dll"

[lostgallifreyan]

grischka <address@hidden> wrote:
(04/04/2009 16:40)

>As people seem consequently to ignore what's called readme.txt,
>meybe we should just get rid of it and have some Windows section
>in tcc-doc.html, respectively extend what's already there:
>(5.3 PE-i386 file generation)

I think that might partly be because the first lines suggest it is additional 
reading, so people do start there but skip it and return to it only later, 
trying to take on new info at a time when not yet sure of their ground, so its 
info doesn't sink in. Happened to me for a while... I think the sequencing of 
the info is crucial. The Quick start section is a very good idea. Even when 
lots of work must be done (particularly when so?) I think it's vital that some 
early results are seen, to encourage effort.

Separating Windows info from the rest I don't know about.. Might be less 
daunting to make transitions if instead those things common to all are placed 
first, to ease later changes. I think the simplification of the quick start 
examples has implications for stuff like paths. It's ok to let Windows and 
Linux users be expected to figure out how their own system paths work, but also 
it is worth directly stating, very early, that TCC can be passed to Windows by 
a DOS path, but that things should be passed to TCC by quoted full long name 
paths. That assertion would save a lot of time for newcomers. Trust me,  "5.3 
PE-i386 file generation" is not the first place a Windows newcomer is likely to 
look. :) The place to hook our attention to it is the first point in Quick 
Start where a command has implications specific to Windows. That signpost can 
be placed very early though, along with a remark about paths to and for TCC.

One thing that might be best moved to the quick start, as tutorials are likely 
to want this, is that pair of commands for building a program that uses an .rc 
resource. Whether the differences between windows.h in tcc and that of gcc are 
significant I don't know. If in doubt I'd probably temporarily replace the gcc 
one with tcc's windows.h file, as an experiment with that worked for me, though 
either file worked ok. I guess if the resource was compiled using C either will 
work.