Q: Why two libiberty.a files?

[Jeffrey A Law]

  In message < Pine.LNX.3.96.980903154014.24710A-100000@localhost >you write:
  > I have a question regarding libiberty.a from egcs-1.1a compiled on a
  > RedHat 5.1 system.  Why are two apparently different libiberty.a files
  > installed?  One is in $prefix/lib and the other is in
  > $prefix/i586-pc-linux-gnu/lib.  
One for the host, one for the target.  Of course if you are doing a
native build host == target and you end up with two copies.

  >   Binutils also tries to install a libiberty.a so which one do we use,
  >   the one from egcs or the one from binutils?
Generally whichever is newer.

  > I only ask because while making binary RPM's for the latest egcs and
  > binutils I noticed that they both try to install this file in the same
  > place (which RPM doesn't handle very well).
Several gnu things have this problem, so you might see how binutils, gdb,
etc handle libiberty and libbfd since those libraries are shared across
a few packages.

jeff