[RFC] BFD library installation

[RFC] BFD library installation

[Svein E. Seldal]

Hi,

What is the exact motivation behind...

1) ... not installing libbfd.a per default when compiling cross targets.

I have written a communication application for a specific development 
kit for the tic4x target, dsktools, and to be able to use the generated 
coff files from the GNU tools, I must rely on the BFD library. As 
libbfd.a is not installed per. default I now need to instruct all users 
of this program to install the library manually -- which I feel is 
cumbersome. Thus I wonder why binutils has taken this turn and made it 
this way... I tend to use the BFD library very often, and I dont quire 
see why it was removed.


2) ... installing the bfd library under a machine-specific directory.

I must admit that I quite dont understand the motivation behind this! 
(please enlighten me.) When I compile the binutils on a linux host for 
the tic4x target, it will install the (host) binaries under 
$prefix/tic4x/bin and $prefix/bin. Why not still install the 
target-specific libbfd.a under $prefix/tic4x/lib as it once was? I mean, 
the other tools in $prefix/tic4x/bin is also host-specific executeables, 
right?

All the tools that I have written that needs the libbfd.a library will 
now need a config.sub script lying around to properly discover the 
host-triplet.


Thanks,
Svein

Re: [RFC] BFD library installation

[Alan Modra]

On Sun, Mar 02, 2003 at 04:45:41PM +0100, Svein E. Seldal wrote:
> What is the exact motivation behind...
> 1) ... not installing libbfd.a per default when compiling cross targets.
> 2) ... installing the bfd library under a machine-specific directory.

The reason is that libbfd.a is both host and target specific, being
code compiled for the host to support the target.  Thus the motivation
for 1) is that we didn't want to overwrite the native libbfd.a (at one
stage libbfd.a installed to $prefix/lib regardless of target), and the
answer to 2) is to allow different host/target dependent libs to
coexist on a system.  I'll admit the scheme could well be improved,
eg. --enable-targets=all --enable-64-bit-bfd is hardly target
dependent.

-- 
Alan Modra
IBM OzLabs - Linux Technology Centre