Re: how to avoid bootstrapping?

[Patrik Hagglund <patha at ida dot liu dot se>]

Hi jeff,

Your answer only makes me more convinced: To be able to build egcs
without bootstrapping is only a matter of Makefile programming.

> 	  * The fortran compiler won't build with a non-gcc compiler.
> 	  "make bootstrap" will deal with this.
> 
> 	  * It is important that the C++ runtime libraries get built
> 	  with the egcs compiler, not the compiler used to build
> 	  egcs.  Again, "make bootstrap" will deal with this.

This only states that the Fortran part and the C++ runtime libraries
is dependent on the C(?) compiler. Bootstrapping couldn't be the only
mechanism to ensure this dependency.

> 	  * "make bootstrap" is also critical because it provides some
> 	  indication that the compiler is functional.

Yes. The bootstrapping process is used for testing. Usually the
bootstrapping is done in two steps to make it possible to compare the
output from the compiler built by the native compiler with the output
from the compiler built by the new compiler. This makes a total of
three stages. A fourth stage seams to be present in egcs, but I haven't
figured out why.

Personally, I think that the "price/performance" ratio of this test,
is to high for ordinary users. Especially when the last test always
fails on some platforms (according to the documentation). Also, I
guess that only the C compiler is tested; other front-ends (and
libraries) remains untested.

--
Patrik Hägglund, patha@ida.liu.se