Re: problem with version 2.7.2.2-6
Magossa'nyi A'rpa'd wrote:
> We have too many gcc packages, I feel. Playing some with them, I've
> found
> the following ones:
> aoutgcc
> altgcc (dunno what it is)
> win32 gcc
> g77
> gnat
> and the "official" one.
g77 and gnat are not actually gcc packages. They are closely tied to
gcc, but they are not part of the base source.
> I feel that we could be more consistent, if the gcc package would
> contain
> all of them, or at most there have been two gcc's: one for pure C,
> and the other for C++,objc,ada,fortran and whatever else, and it would
> be
> capable of outputting all binary formats ued: elf, aout, win32 coff,
> (and
> possibly elks?).
The way we have the packages arranged now _is_ consistant. The basic
gcc package contains the compilers which come in the gcc source
distribution. Other compilers, and cross compilers for non-standard
binary formats (like altgcc and cygwin) get their own package. What's
hard to understand?
Merging these into one or two big packages is a really bad idea. It
would make handling the source package a nightmare, and force people who
want only one of the "oddball" compilers to install several.
> Or another approach would be that there is a "base" gcc package which
> knows
> about the possibility of all above, and there are different packages
> who
> have only the language or output-format specific part. With this
> approach it
> would be easy to insert cross-compiler support, which we sonn will
> need
> badly, as ports to other architectures evolve.
This is how it works now. The problem here is that some of the packages
are ill-behaved, like the old gnat package. /usr/bin/gcc is sacred; it
should never be diverted, renamed, replaced, or touched in any way by
any package other than gcc. Cross compilers in /usr/bin should be named
"arch-os-gcc", like altgcc is.
I am willing to patch the base gcc package in order to make /usr/bin/gcc
smarter; this would eliminate the need for separate gcc binaries for
packages like gnat. Anyone maintaining a compiler package which could
use such patches should drop me a line.
--Galen
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