Instructions for compilation from multiple source files

[Solomon E via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Monday, 10 November 2014 at 13:44:26 UTC, ketmar via
Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:

> you'd better use some IDE if you have to guess such things. gdc 
> manpage
> documents gdc-specific options. it even gives you some 
> directions in
> "see also" section, which you are supposed to follow to read 
> more about
> GCC suite. GCC also has extensive on-line documentation.
>
> yes, you are supposed to know how to use GCC, part of which gdc 
> is. if
> you don't want to think about that, you can use IDE which does 
> all this
> for you automatically.

I keep saying I want documentation or specifications. If there
isn't any, how would the people who write the IDE frontends for
languages know whether they're doing it right? Maybe they aren't
and they're just guessing and naming output files whatever way
sounds and looks right to them, so it sort of fits with what
output people expect, without actually being the right format of
files!

(I quoted from the GDC man page. How do you think I did that if
it wasn't for reading it?)

Some pages say to rename output files with ".a" if you want a
library type file, other pages say they're an archive format for
library files. So this isn't idle speculation that there might be
some confusion by tool writers or there might be a lack of enough
officially specified standards or accessible enough documentation.

http://rainers.github.io/visuald/visuald/Installation.html
quote
when building a library you should change the output file name
extension to ".a".
end quote