Re: [RFC/RFA] --with-build-time-tools configure option

["Jan Beulich" <JBeulich at novell dot com>]

An additional note after having run the testsuite for a native Linux
build: In the top level, zlib, fastjar, and all target Makefiles,
{target,build,host}_alias don't get set anymore, resulting in most of
the target testsuites to fail miserably (for my config, all but
libjava). While possible that this is either due to my minor changes, or
due to me not having used autoconf 2.13 on the top level, at least the
former seems unlikely and could hence point to a different problem (and
should the autoconf version be the culprit, it'd shed a rather bad light
on its backward compatibility). Jan

>>> Paolo Bonzini <paolo.bonzini@lu.unisi.ch> 05.01.06 10:20:18 >>>

>- I had to add an m4_pattern_allow to top level configure.in for
>AS_FOR_TARGET
>  
>
This is because you are using Autoconf 2.5x instead of 2.13.

>- I had to remove the ^ uses in the right hand operands of expr's :
>operator
>  
>
Didn't know about this non-portability.  Indeed expr checks only for 
anchored expressions, but I was trying to make it more clear.

>- Since you already introduced the use of
>ACX_CHECK_INSTALLED_TARGET_TOOL for as, ld, and nm, it seemed only
>logical to extend this to ar and ranlib
>  
>
I am not sure, because the purpose of this patch was to do the tests on

the same tools that GCC will use after installation -- and GCC only
uses 
as/ld/nm.  I think that if you want ar and ranlib placed somewhere
else, 
you'd need to specify the new --with-build-time-tools options.

If we want to decide that $prefix/$target/bin is an interesting place
to 
look for tools, it's fine by me but this should also apply to host 
tools, and should be coordinated with the Autoconf folks (which, sorry

to say, means that likely it will never be done).

Paolo