Re: thoughts on crosstool enhancements

[Dan Kegel <dank at kegel dot com>]

On 2/15/06, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@mindspring.com> wrote:
> 1) how about removing the buildlogs from the basic tarball, and making
> that a separate download if people need it?  those buildlogs represent
> the vast majority of the crosstool tarball, and it's not clear that
> every person downloading crosstool is going to ever look at those
> logs.

I never expected the average person to.   They are mainly
accessed by people doing google searches for build errors,
I think.   I'm not sure the extra bulk in the archive hurts too
much (considering how big the toolchain tarballs are), but
it does make some sense to separate out the buildlogs.

> 2) how about removing support for some of the older and superseded
> versions of software and getting rid of some of those patch
> directories?

Nope.  Some people need 'em.

> in some cases, it's clear you need to keep older versions of some
> software.  but, as an example, does crosstool really need to supply
> patches and support all of gcc 3.4.0, 3.4.1, 3.4.2, 3.4.3 *and* 3.4.4?
>
> at some point, wouldn't it be easier to reduce the number of versions
> to support and just tell people that, if they're using 3.4.3, they
> might as well upgrade to 3.4.4?  or something like that.
>
> (as another example, how many different versions of binutils really
> need to be supported?)

Telling people to switch versions of the compiler or binutils is
generally not going to fly.  This stuff is very finicky, and if
you have a toolchain that works, it's often not clear it's
worth the risk to update its components.

> 3) how about extending crosstool to support multiple patch
> directories?  this makes it really easy to add local patches for newer
> software without cluttering up the crosstool patches/ directory
> itself.  i use that technique for my mini script and it makes life a
> lot easier.

Yes, I might do that.
- Dan

--
Wine for Windows ISVs: http://kegel.com/wine/isv

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