fate of libxml2 in gcc

[Jeffrey Law]

On 1/16/2026 1:00 PM, James K. Lowden wrote:
>
> At present libgcobol requires the target to supply libxml2.  That
> complicates building cross compilers and mitigates against how
> distributions are normally built.  The remedy is to make libgcobol a
> bootstrap library, meaning AIUI that libraries it requires are built
> first, so that libgcobol can be built on a vanilla machine, from
> scratch, with the target providing nothing more than a C++ compiler.
Let's get some clarity on this paragraph.  You say "requires the target 
to supply libxml2".   I could read that a couple different ways and the 
differences are likely meaningful.

So does libxml2 get linked into target code?  Or libxml2 needed to build 
the compiler itself?

In the former case, we'd likely need a copy in the tree managed like we 
do with other target libraries.  If it's the later, then we have a lot 
more flexibility.

Jeff