RE: eliminating mpc/mpfr and reducing gmp

[Jay K <jay dot krell at cornell dot edu>]

> Well, the other thing is: why not just build them once and install them to
> your $prefix? There's no need to build them in-tree every time if you have
> sufficiently up-to-date versions installed.
>
> cheers,
> DaveK

 
I have a CVS tree, used by others, that builds a frontend.
 
 
"Others" are a few people and a few automated build machines (using Hudson),
with various operating systems (Linux, Solaris, Darwin, FreeBSD, etc.).
 
 
The requirements on these machines isn't of course zero -- they
exist, they are up and running -- but is kept low where possible.
 
 
So the decision was made, not exactly by me, but I went along,
to add gmp+mpfr to the tree, and later mpc.
 
 
It's pretty simple, reliable, works.
 
 
What I was often doing was deleting gmp/mpfr in my local CVS tree,
leaving configure to find them in /usr/local.
And then sometimes I'd accidentally restore them with cvs upd -dAP.
 
 
I toyed with the idea of having it always check /usr/local first
but didn't do that. What if user has an insufficient version there?
I'd have to test for that and fallback to in-tree.
 
 
Since we are using Hudson we could probably add nice automation,
to build gmp/mpfr/mpc "somewhere", neither /usr/local, nor "in gcc",
 maybe install to $HOME/hudson, and point the frontend build at them.
But the Hudson stuff...is not well known to me, I'd kind of rather
leave it alone. And I'd have to e.g. deal with the gmp inline problem,
just another small detail...
 
 
I'm satisfied so far with the pruning. I can see it isn't for everyone.
We'll see, maybe I'll grow to dislike it as well.
 
 
 - Jay