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Re: alternatives for gcc



On 2011-02-02 03:01 +0100, Andrew Reid wrote:

> On Tuesday 01 February 2011 20:11:31 Joe Riel wrote:
>> Why are there no alternatives, configurable with update-alternatives,
>> for gcc? Seems like I should be able to configure whether /usr/bin/gcc
>> is linked to gcc-4.3, gcc-4.4, etc.   Of course I can just set the link
>> manually (which I do), but ...

See /usr/share/doc/gcc/README.Debian why gcc is not managed via
alternatives.

>   Can't you set up new alterantives within the update-alternatives 
> mechanism? 
>
>   I have never done this, but it was one of the options I was
> considering a while ago to control which version of an app 
> was the default -- as it turned out, I was able to use the
> "stow" mechanism to good effect, because it was a non-packaged
> app, so I only got as far as reading the update-alterantives
> documentation.
>
>   The man-page says that the "--install" option sets up a new
> batch of alternatives.
>  
>   I don't know if this will interact constructively with the 
> package manager.

It will break very badly when you install/upgrade the gcc package which
sets up the compiler links itself.  Therefore, don't do that and use
CC=gcc-4.3 when necessary.

Sven


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