Antonio S. de A. Terceiro [u] wrote on 20/10/2004 18:18:
How do people in Debian handle compilers that depend on itself to be compiled?
Good question.
More precisely:
* can a package build-depend on itself? I've saw that gcc, for
example, don't (at least explicitily) build-depend on itself.
gcc doesn't depend on itself to be built, but it needs _any_ C compiler available to compile an intermediate state of itself, which (basically) then compiles the final stage. That final stage than compiles itself again to check wether the output it the same as from the second compile.
* how packages like those go in the repository for the first time?
They probably only can go in if there is an alternate way of compiling it, like there is with gcc.
I couldn't find references about that on either in Debian Policy Manual or in Debian Developer's Reference. If I missed something, please point me were.
I would be interested in the solution, too, but so far I don't know a single compiler which absolutely needs itself to compile.
cu, sven