When trying to keep track of various builds of GCC, it would be convenient to be able to store a comment to be read back with -v. Since -v echoes the full configure command line, all that's required is not rejecting an argument containing the desired comment. I'll upload a patch which permits this. All it does is add a --comment option which does nothing; it's just seventeen copies of the following, one for each configure file: --comment=*) ;; #Do nothing; this is just so that the comment will show up with -v. There may be an easier way for maintainers to patch this, using auto-configuration; but I've never run that. There are workarounds, such as embedding configuration information into directory names, but this approach seems simpler. A patched checking=yes build passed make check. Sample Session: 32> /opt2/gcc401-chk-all-4p/bin/g++ -v Using built-in specs. Target: i686-pc-linux-gnu Configured with: /opt2/gcc-4.0.1-src/configure --enable-checking=all --prefix=/opt2/gcc401-chk- all-4p/ --enable-languages=c,c++ --comment=PalmSource checking=all build by Flash Sheridan 2005-08-11 via distcc. Patches 20161-8277, 22508-2005-08-00326, 22600-9330, 22604-2005-08-00334, plus a local patch to seventeen versions of configure to allow this comment. Thread model: posix gcc version 4.0.1
Created attachment 9508 [details] Proposed patch
One thing you could do is replace the place where the configure options where, unless you want the configure options also.
Use --with-comment instead.
Thanks, --with-comment seems to work, but it doesn't seem to be documented. Grepping both the documentation and source folder didn't find it; Googling for it turned it up in the context of MySQL, but not GCC. So I'm re-titling and reopening the bug. I think the option should be listed in --help, but it certainly needs to be documented somewhere.
The main reason why it is documented, it is not a real configure option. But we (autoconf) ignores unknown --with options.