Re: A patch for Makefile.in

[Franz Sirl <Franz dot Sirl-kernel at lauterbach dot com>]

At 19:54 27.07.98 , Andi Kleen wrote:
>On Mon, Jul 27, 1998 at 07:18:59PM +0200, Jeffrey A Law wrote:
>> 
>>   In message <19980727191235.A1438@kali.lrz-muenchen.de>you write:
>>   > But see the rest of my message. Lots of programs use cpp for non-C
>>   > text files, and they don't need the sophisticated specs file handling.
>>   > Most Unix systems supply a cpp somewhere in the standard $PATH, it just
>>   > does not work on gcc based systems. 
>> Right, but many do depend on some predefines.  And while they do not
>> need complex specs handling, they often need some specs handling.
>> 
>> Calling cpp directly, IMHO, is bad and we should not encourage folks to
>> do so.
>> 
>> And, actually, cpp has generally *not* been in a standard $PATH
>> location.  Most code expects to find it in /lib or /usr/lib, which
>> are generally not in one's path.
>
>The idea was that if gcc installed it per default in $(execprefix)/bin then 
>a simple symlink would suffice for that. Currently it is a pain to keep
>the /lib/cpp link up to date with the varying gcc-lib/.../../ directory
>names.
>
>Another argument in favour of installed cpp: as I pointed out many 
>non-development packages use cpp to preprocess configuration files. E.g. in 
>many Linux distributions "cpp" is therefore a separate package from gcc
>to not require a user who just needs cpp to run e.g. his Window Manager to 
>install the complete compiler. A setup to install cpp and cpp.1 per default
>would make the packaging scripts easier, and the paedagogical effect you
>were hoping for is non-existent on these distributions anyways @)
>
>In the Linux case it would be very confusing for the user when some
>distributions allow to call cpp directly from the PATH, and others need
>gcc -E. 

Just a dumb users question, why not let gcc act as gcc -E if called as cpp
(via symlink or copied binary on symlink-less platforms)? This looks so
obvious to me ;-)

Franz.