Luke Mewburn <lukem@NetBSD.org> writes:

> If we're considering changing this, is there prior art in other
> systems (e.g, the GNU toolchain, libtool, ...) for purpose specific
> object suffices ?

Not in the GNU build system nor in libtool.

The GNU build system normally uses a simple .o suffix for an object
file.  The specific type of object file is determined by the directory
in which it is found.

libtool uses the .lo suffix for a text file.  The file foo.lo
describes where to find the results of compiling foo.c normally
(typically foo.o) and where to find it compiled with -fPIC (typically
.libs/foo.o).

Ian