Re: A patch for configure

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian at zembu dot com>]

   Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 17:06:27 -0700
   From: "H . J . Lu" <hjl@lucon.org>

   On Fri, May 19, 2000 at 04:38:19PM -0700, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:

   > I want you to explain why this problem justifies your putting a hard
   > error into the binutils configury that prevents me from building a
   > cross-toolchain without installing it.  Putting in a difficult to
   > remember configure option makes it a tiny bit better, but only a very
   > tiny bit.

   How about this one? I should have put in in the first place. If your
   machine doesn't support cut and paste, I can make the option shorter.

   We have quite a few problems with the ia64 toolchain because very
   people build the cross compiler with a different C library. My patch
   may be annoying to you. But it helps people who doesn't use newlib.
   Can you live with adding a new option to your configure script?
   I really appreciate it.

Newlib is irrelevant.  Using extra libraries is irrelevant.  We are
not talking about gcc or newlib.  We are talking about the binutils.

I have built many cross-compilers which do not use newlib.  Do you
know about the --with-headers and --with-libs options?  Why not key
off them to add the required -B options?

I will repeat:

I want you to explain why this problem justifies your putting a hard
error into the binutils configury that prevents me from building a
cross-toolchain without installing it.  Putting in a difficult to
remember configure option makes it a tiny bit better, but only a very
tiny bit.

Please do not bother to answer this message until you are willing to
answer this.  I don't ask these questions to amuse myself.  I ask them
because I want to know the answer.  Right now, I do not know the
answer.  If there isn't an answer, then your patch is not justified.
Yes, I understand that this patch makes your life easier.  But it
makes my life harder, and it makes something that has always worked
stop working.  Since you are breaking an existing setup which many
people use, you need a better explanation than simply saying that it
makes your life easier.

Ian