incompatible spec files?

[Christopher Seawood]

On Thu, 15 Jan 1998, Mike Stump wrote:

> > Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 20:28:12 -0800 (PST)
> > From: Christopher Seawood <cls@seawood.org>
> 
> > I sent in a bug report with the egcs-1.0 release stating that I could not
> > run old versions of gcc with the standard 'gcc -V ${vnum} -b ${arch}'
> > command.
> 
> I do not recommend that anyone use -V, I think it is an accident
> waiting to happen.  Instead, set prefix to something like
> /usr/local/egcs-1.0, and then put a sym link from /usr/local/bin/gcc
> to whatever version you want.  You'll find that gcc 2.0 and gcc 3.0
> and all versions between can exist and run on the same system, if this
> is done.  -V just doesn't work with 2.0.  :-)

This is a) a moot point if you use gcc 2.8.0 instead of 2.7.2.3 and b) a
matter of taste.  I prefer not to have my system fall into symlink hell
with multiple copies of any binary all over the place.  I used -V 2.7.2.3
-b i486-linuxlibc5 so I could access my cross-compiler.  

As long as I can remember, -V has been the standard way to use different
backends of the gnu c compiler.  If you are going to make such a major
change in behavior, IMO it should be done after a major release, ie 2.x ->
3.0.  And in any case, it should be documented that such a change has
occurred or that spec files are now incompatible.

Regards
Christopher