GCC 3.0.3 build-procedure incompatibilities with POSIX 1003.1-2001

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Paul Eggert wrote:

> 	* contrib/gcc_release (DIFF): diff -c3 -> diff -C3, to conform
> 	to POSIX 1003.1-2001.
> 	* contrib/snapshot: Likewise.

contrib/snapshot is obsolete.  gcc_release only needs to work on GNU
systems; in particular, it relies on other GNU diff options.  (And the
version in contrib on the 3.0 branch is only for 3.0 releases, and
deliberately is not having any changes not needed for those releases made
to it; the current version for snapshots and 3.1 and later releases is the
mainline maintainer-scripts/gcc_release.)

For the other contrib scripts supporting POSIX hosts is useful (though
unlike the scripts used as part of the build, they don't need to be
portable to non-POSIX hosts; for example, they can use shell functions).

> +# Copy all but the first 15 bytes of standard input to standard output.
> +# This used to be "tail +16c", but POSIX 1003.1-2001 no longer allows that,
> +# and some older "tail" implementations don't support the POSIX syntax.
> +STRIP15 = (dd bs=15 count=1 >/dev/null 2>&1; cat)

I think there's a need for the GNU Coding Standards to be fixed here;  
under "Utilities in Makefiles", they don't allow dd, but nor do they allow
tail, and elsewhere they allow dd in installation commands.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk