Two wishlist patches submitted to allow static build of binutils and gcc

[Jim Heck <pinball.rules@gmail.com>]

I have submitted two wishlist bugs with patches that may be of embedded 
interest.

binutils
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=590101

gcc-4.4
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=590102

These are to allow the building of static toolchains by passing an 
environment variable 'BUILD_STATIC=yes' on the dpkg-buildpackage command 
line.  While static tools are usually not what people normally use, they 
can be of interest I have found in certain situations.

The rationale for providing the ability to compile a statically linked 
binutils and gcc is to allow greater portability of that toolchain to 
environments other than the stock Debian environment in which the 
toolchain was built.  This becomes especially interesting in the 
embedded world where cross compilers (such as ones that can be created 
in Debian) have long lifetimes and can be deployed to varied buildserver 
enviroments to support cross compiling software for target embedded 
systems. It removes the dependence on such things as having the exact 
correct version
of GLIBC (and other libraries) installed on the buildserver and makes 
the toolchain standalone.  A static toolchain also provides the ultimate 
in repeatablilty, since it does not depend on dynamically loadable 
modules that can change on the build system.

Static toolchains can still compile executables that are themselves 
dynamically linked.  It is only the tools themselves that have been 
statically linked.

-Jim