imported sources

[Nix]

Patrik Hagglund <patha@softlab.ericsson.se> writes:

> For example, why are the following packages included: texinfo,

Because the GCC documentation is so large that the texinfo sources are
smaller than the generated .info files. (There has been talk of removing
this, but I do not know what became of it. It seemed to fizzle out...)

> zlib,

So that gcj can read jar files, which are (essentially) gzipped.

>       libiberty?

This is part of GCC.

Well. Really, this is part of the Cygnus tree --- a common library used
by lots of things in it, like the binutils, gdb, &c --- and GCC is the
package that `owns' libiberty for the benefit of the other packages in
that tree.

>                  What happens if I remove them and install
> canonical versions instead?

For zlib and texinfo, nothing bad happens.

For libiberty, you can't. Although there are other versions in, e.g.,
gdb and the binutils, those versions are slight forks of a common
tree. That common tree is kept in the GCC source tree.

So you have the canonical version of libiberty installed already :)

> I think it would be much easier to get started if it was possible
> to get the "pristine" gcc source somehow.

The stuff you get from CVS *is* the pristine sources.

(Inasmuch as anything with makefiles as junky as GCC's can be described
as `pristine'. ;) )

-- 
`Naturally, a sysadmin's entire person is holy.  We have the power to kill
 daemons.' --- Mike Sphar