How to stop GCC from searching for components in --prefix on Windows host?

[E. Weddington]

Dave Korn wrote:

>  The error is with your users, not gcc!  Heh, well, it's fair enough to say
>that it's a limitation of gcc that it gets hard-coded install paths built
>into it.
>
>  
>
Exactly. Having hard-coded install paths works fine for *nix systems, 
but, ...well everybody knows the general consensus for MS's stuff....

>>There have been some problems where X on the build machine is on a 
>>particular drive, and on the install machine X is on a drive with 
>>removable media, then GCC sometimes craps out and doesn't properly 
>>locate all the components. Is there some way to get GCC to *not* search 
>>for components in the configured prefix, but preserve its 
>>other search rules?
>>    
>>
>
>  How about supplying a dummy path to the --prefix argument when you build
>your releases, something that points to C:\ or whatever, something that's
>pretty much guaranteed to be there on every system you need to support but
>also pretty much guaranteed not to contain any executables that would get in
>the way?
>  
>

I wish I could guarantee that every system is going to have a C:\. In 
practice, most will, but sure as I say it, somebody's going to have a 
system that won't have it.

I'm certainly not afraid to patch this distribution to take out the 
search in --prefix for components as the current searching of PATH (or 
whatever it does after searching --prefix) works just fine. My questions 
would be: is this a sane thing to do (considering the problem)? Where 
would one do this in the code? Is it relatively localized? and... would 
this situation be considered a bug? should I fill out a bug report?

Thanks
Eric