Re: Adding zlib to GCC

[Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>]

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Tromey <tromey@cygnus.com> writes:

    Tom> The net zlib doesn't use configure and can't be dropped into
    Tom> our source tree as-is.

This is an important issue.  Can the zlib people be enticed into
using configure?

I don't think it's a bad thing for GCC to require that other tools be
downloaded and installed before it can be built. 

Lots of packages work that way: you have to build OpenSSL before you
can build OpenSSH, for example.

In the long run, if we include all the libraries we need, we'll
gradually bloat GCC considerably.  (For example, suppose we want XML
output from the front-ends for use in source browsers.  Should we
include an XML library?)

I see your point, of course -- that not including the zlib source will
make it harder for people to build GCJ, and it's terrific that you've
been careful to minimize changes.  But, I'd still like to see these
kinds of things packaged separately, and have configure try to find
the zlib already installed on my system.  If it's not there, we could
have configure spit out "Can't build libgcj without zlib" and a
message indicating where to download it.

--
Mark Mitchell                   mark@codesourcery.com
CodeSourcery, LLC               http://www.codesourcery.com