./genmodes: syntax error at line 1: `(' unexpected => while building gcc3.4.2

[Nix]

On 5 May 2005, nix@esperi.org.uk murmured woefully:
> On 5 May 2005, Saurabh Bhatnagar uttered the following:
>> ./genmodes: syntax error at line 1: `(' unexpected
>> gmake[2]: *** [s-modes] Error 2
>> gmake[2]: Leaving directory `/user/sbhatnag/gcc-3.4.2/objdir/gcc'
>> gmake[1]: *** [stage2_build] Error 2
>> gmake[1]: Leaving directory `/user/sbhatnag/gcc-3.4.2/objdir/gcc'
>> gmake: *** [bootstrap] Error 2
> 
> Please read the installation guide. You cannot build GCC in an
> objdir that is a subdirectory of the GCC source tree: you must
> build it in a parallel directory (e.g. /user/sbhatnag/gcc-build,
> running configure via a relative path, as ../gcc-3.4.2/configure).
> 
> This has been true pretty much forever (certainly since gcc-2.7.2).

To be more precise, bootstrapping this way may have worked at some point
in the past: some effort goes into making it work, but keeping it
working is hard, and none of the GCC developers bootstrap that way, so
it often breaks and doesn't get noticed, while bootstrapping from a
parallel directory *is* tested. :)

-- 
`End users are just test loads for verifying that the system works, kind of
 like resistors in an electrical circuit.' - Kaz Kylheku in c.o.l.d.s