[Developers] unifying language: "MinGW", "GCC", and "g++"

[Arni Magnusson]

I would certainly talk about the GCC compiler, not the g++ compiler.

By analogy, we talk about the Visual C++ compiler (not the cl compiler) 
the Intel C++ compiler (not the icpc compiler), and the Clang compiler 
(not the clang++ compiler). The lower case things are commands.

The meaning of the term MinGW is murky indeed ... an umbrella project for 
anything that makes Windows more similar to Linux. MinGW offers products 
that include (1) GCC that runs in the Dos shell, (2) many Linux-like 
utilities that run in the Dos shell, and (3) a full-blown Linux emulator. 
In a README file it may be easier to get the point across by saying "GCC 
in Windows". In admb-trunk/README.txt, I have written "Windows and GCC" 
for the sake of alphabetical ordering.

So, like a Chinese restaurant, we strive to use little or no MinGW in our 
readmes. The surrounding words must clarify what is meant. The file 
'mingw.mak' refers to MinGW product #1 from the menu above, today's 
special.

With cross compilation (building binaries on platform A that run on 
platform B or C, but won't run on A) the confusion starts for real. I 
propose writing a DONTREADME.txt to cover that stuff.

Arni



On Mon, 26 Mar 2012, Ian Taylor wrote:

> Hi Developers,
>
> We currently have a confusing mix of terms to describe some of the 
> compiler options for ADMB: "MinGW", "GCC", and "g++".
>
> Here's my understanding of the meaning of these terms:
>
>   - GCC currently refers to the Gnu Compiler Collection (formerly to the
>   GNU C Compiler).
>   - g++ is one of the compilers in GCC (the one that gets used for ADMB)
>   - MinGW is the Windows port of GCC
>
> Is it necessary to use all three terms?
>
> I'm trying to update Johnoel's old installation instructions to match 
> the README file and would like to have things be throughout the ADMB 
> project.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Ian
>