Re: [Q] Configure: Choosing as on Solaris, --with-gnu-as, and--with-as

[Wolfgang Bangerth <wolfgang dot bangerth at iwr dot uni-heidelberg dot de>]

On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Tim Prince wrote:
> > some years ago I fist tried installing gcc on Sun Solaris 2.7, and found
> > out that giving --with-gnu-as to configure still yields /usr/ccs/bin/as
> > (Sun's assembler) even though that comes later in $PATH. By some way I
> > found out that I have to specify --with-as=/usr/local/bin/as. Now, I
> > forgot again, so I searched docs and didn't find anything about it any
> > more.
> >
> > Writing up a corresponding patch for the online docs, I found
> > a/ That neither --with-as=... nor --with-ld is documented in install.texi.
> > b/ That install.texi states that --with-gnu-as does only make a difference
> >    on certain systems, amoung which I do not find Sun Solaris, although
> >    I am sure that it actually *does* make a difference.
>
> It would certainly make a difference if you didn't install or link
> binutils into the same path for which you are configuring the compiler.
> If you are patching the docs, you should include a reference to that,
> which AFAIK is meant to be the primary way of finding gas.

Oh, so I don't understand much about it, I fear. But how's it that gcc
takes an assembler depending on where it is installed? That does not seem
intuitive. (It isn't anyway, since gcc even takes /usr/ccs/bin/as if that
is not in $PATH.) Could someone clarify the rules which assembler is
taken?

Thanks
  Wolfgang

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wolfgang Bangerth          email: wolfgang.bangerth@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de
                             www: http://gaia.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de/~wolf