Re: Adding zlib to GCC

[Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>]

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

    Tom> months.  The complaint has been that it is too hard to get
    Tom> and build libgcj -- but, ironically, if we don't incorporate
    Tom> all these libraries into the gcc tree then it actually
    Tom> becomes *harder* to build libgcj.

This is definitely a very important consideration.

I do think it will be good if C++ people in particular build libgcj
more often.  But I don't think it's reasonable to assume that they
will do so with every C++ change.  Building libgcj takes a long time,
as you well know. :-) The requirements for C++ should remain that the
C++ test-suite passes.  I will guarantee you that I personally will
install the relevant libraries so that when I (or our automated
servers) do a `make boostrap' they will build libgcj.  

(This is a parenthetical.  Skip if you like. :-)

I do not believe it practical to add too many more languages and
libraries to GCC and still require everyone to build everything and
test everything all the time.  I think we should instead be trying to
move towards stable components -- let the back end folks hack on the
back end for a while without impacting the front end folks, let the
C++ folks hack without impacting the Java folks, and so forth.  The
more we intertwine, the more poorly we scale.  Richard Henderson and I
have an ongoing debate on this issue -- Richard does not agree with
me.  Since Richard is usually right, but since I still believe what I
believe, I am worried. :-))

I certainly do not doubt that you've done all that is humanly possible
to avoid dependencies and such -- I certainly wouldn't say "fix
libgcj" since 100% trust your ability to do a good design.

I'm disappointed that these libraries are as hard as you say to
configure, build, and install correctly.  I would like to download and
install zlib, or the collector, just once -- not rebuild it every time
I have to rebuild GCC.  Perhaps more importantly, I really would like
to avoid the temptation to "just make a change or two right here" that
are convenient.  I think disincentivizing that is worth a lot.

I'm not sure what to do.  Do you think it is impractical to put this
stuff in the infrasructure directory, like some of the other
components that we use with GCC?  For example, dejagnu and gperf are
distributed that way.  I think that would be a cleaner solution.

If these packages really have a scheme that works well on lots of
platforms (which you suggested), then is it really hard to download,
configure and install them?  It sounds like a little shell script
might be able to do the
configure-in-the-way-needed-for-libgcj/build/install, and we could do
that without putting it in the tree and making everyone recompile all
the time.

If you take my point of view into account, and still feel that there's
really no way around putting this stuff in CVS, I'll defer to your
judgement.

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