From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Alexandre Oliva To: rms@gnu.org Cc: kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu, gcc2@cygnus.com, egcs@cygnus.com Subject: Re: Proposal for new organization of gcc Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 18:58:00 -0000 Message-id: References: <9801082336.AA26988@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> <199801120054.RAA07984@wijiji.santafe.edu> X-SW-Source: 1998-01/msg00293.html Richard Stallman writes: > The C front end can be in a separate subdirectory, > but it has to be in the base tar file. > Everyone needs to build the C front end > so as to be able to bootstrap. Having the C front-end in the base tar file is ok for me, but I don't like to be required to build it just because I want to install the front-end for one more language. In a perfect gcs, I'd be able to download the gcs backend and the language front-end, build them with the installed C compiler and install that, and I'm done. I've considered this a very important feature since the first time I tried to install g77 in an independent directory, and it took ages for my SunOS 4.1.3 host to build the whole gcc archive and fix include-files again, the ones it had just fixed one week before. This is unnecessary, and I don't think it would be that hard to have configure & Makefile set up so that they'd build the C compiler and use it iff its sources are available. If they're not, an already installed C compiler should be used. Obviously, if the C sources are not available, one is unable to bootstrap the compiler, but then, the only reason for bootstrapping is for building the C compiler, which wouldn't be built anyway in this case. -- Alexandre Oliva mailto:oliva@dcc.unicamp.br mailto:aoliva@acm.org http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva Universidade Estadual de Campinas, SP, Brasil