Serious Bugs In Gcc Builds

[Eric Botcazou]

[Please do not cross post between lists, it's gcc-help material]

>        By the way don't bother flaming back at me I am way beyond
> this and thus impervious! Hopefully by fixing the issues documented
> below you will open up the GCC software to be usable by a larger
> audience of users.

Everything is documented so there is not much to fix.  See in particular
http://gcc.gnu.org/install and the pages linked to from there.

> Issue 1) The configure and build scripts insist (read that fight to the
> death) on using the solaris linker (/usr/ccs/bin/ld) despite every
> effort to the contrary, and this of course causes errors. The following
> were my failed efforts to redirect it to the Gnu Linker (/opt/sfw/bin/gld):
> a) Providing explicit command line direction to configure.
> /export/home/tools/gcc/gcc-4.0.4/configure  --with-gnu-ld  --with-gnu-as
> --with-as=/opt/sfw/bin/as --with-ld=/opt/sfw/bin/ld

There is an inconsistency here: your GNU linker is /opt/sfw/bin/gld and you 
pass /opt/sfw/bin/ld to the configure script.  Otherwise, it's the correct 
configure line if /opt/sfw/bin/as and /opt/sfw/bin/ld are working GNU tools.

> Issue 2) Same as Issue 1 except for the Gnu assembler
> (/opt/sfw/bin/gas).

Likewise.

> Issue 4)  What's In A Name? Or what the hell should we name it?
> When I down load and install various  releases of GNU Bintools a
> tool like GNU Make is sometimes called gmake and sometimes called
> make. This causes confusion and thus errors in that the Gcc build scripts
> use make. I would suggest standardizing on the names to prevent confusion.
> To this end I would suggest that GNU Make always, always, always be
> called gmake and when you want to use GNU Make in your project that
> you type gmake.

'gmake' will work just fine for GCC.

> Issue 5) The build process is way to complicated for the average user
> to negotiate successfully. The user interface should be simplified to the
> following for a native compiler:
> ./configure
> gmake
> gmake install

export CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/ksh
$srcdir/configure ...
gmake
gmake install

is not much more complicated and works flawlessly on Solaris.

-- 
Eric Botcazou