Why does libiberty have to build before a C library?

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@mvista.com> writes:

>> # FIXME: We temporarily define our own version of AC_PROG_CC.  This is
>> # copied from autoconf 2.12, but does not call AC_PROG_CC_WORKS.  We
>> # are probably using a cross compiler, which will not be able to fully
>> # link an executable.  This should really be fixed in autoconf
>> # itself.

Daniel> The interesting question is, why do we need this at all?

My recollection, from way back when, was that the compiler couldn't
link at the time this macro was executed.  I'm pretty sure this didn't
have to do with library ordering, since when this code went in (for
libjava, the original code was written in 1998, and goes back to
before the public CVS) libjava worked with a newlib-based target but
we still needed the macro change.

Maybe it was as Geoff says: the target needed special flags in order
to link at all.  In our case it was a MIPS target, not PPC, but
perhaps the same thing holds.

However, what I remember is that we ran all the target configure
scripts before building any of the target libraries.  In this
situation, build order wouldn't matter since newlib would only be
configured, not built, at the time when AC_PROG_CC is invoked -- so no
C library would be available at all.

Tom