RE: Searching configured and relocated prefix.

[Eric Weddington <eweddington at cso dot atmel dot com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Lance Taylor [mailto:iant@google.com] 
Sent: Sunday, July 23, 2006 3:57 PM
To: Andrew Pinski
Cc: Mark Mitchell; Carlos O'Donell; gcc@gcc.gnu.org
Subject: Re: Searching configured and relocated prefix.

Andrew Pinski <pinskia@physics.uc.edu> writes:

> On Jul 23, 2006, at 10:44 AM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> 
> > "Me too."
> 
> Except now you have suggested that we change the current behavior 
> which you already suggested at the GCC summit we should not do at 
> least not for a couple of release for warning people.  You cannot have 
> it both ways, people already depend on this behavior, I am one 
> example.

My general point at the gcc summit was not one about changing the compiler,
although that was the context in which I raised it.  It was that we should
have more consideration of the needs of our users, and less consideration of
the needs of our developers.

As far as I am concerned, the relevant question on this issue is whether
anybody other than toolchain developers depends on the current behaviour.  I
believe the answer is no.  Since the current behaviour has various drawbacks
which are clearly evident in organizations which use NFS widely, and since
moreover I believe that most non-gcc- developers do not exepect the current
behaviour, I believe that we should change it.

Ian
------------------------------------------

All,

I'm glad to see this issue finally being addressed.

Especially since I've been trying to work around this since Nov. 2002.
Especially since I discussed this on this mailing list in the past and Mark
agreed that this problem should be fixed, hence the filing of bug report
(enhancement) #17621, in Sep. 2004:

<http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17621>

I also strongly agree with Danny Smith's email about this.

There are precious few people who build their own compiler. Most people just
want to use a compiler, and would rather it be built by other people. Rarely
will an installed compiler be in the exact same location as where the
compiler was built. And you can just about guarantee that is the case when
it comes to Windows because of the compiler having to be built with either
Cygwin or MinGW/MSYS. In that scenario, it is absolutely stupid to have the
compiler search the built prefix. I'm sorry, but it's stupid for the FSF to
assume that the only way a user will use the software is that they build it
themselves. There should be an innate ability and a simple and easy method
for relocation of the software.

Eric Weddington