Re: AS and ASFLAGS

[Ralf Corsepius]

Tom Tromey wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "Richard" == Richard Boulton <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> Richard>  i) Is there any documentation of this yet?  I couldn't find
> Richard>  any, and simply had to guess what to do from error messages
> Richard>  and sources.
> 
> There isn't.  I'm working on documentation.  Thanks for mentioning
> this, I'm afraid this change wasn't yet on my list :-(.
> 
> Richard> ii) Is there a recommended way to set ASFLAGS to a default
> Richard> value.  I've currently put
> Richard>       AS="$CC"
> Richard>       AC_SUBST(AS)
> Richard>       AC_SUBST(ASFLAGS)
> 
> This looks fine. 
Sorry for spoiling the show, but IMHO, this is basically broken:

>From info gmake:
`AS'
     Program for doing assembly; default `as'.

`ASFLAGS'
     Extra flags to give to the assembler (when explicitly invoked
on a
     `.s' or `.S' file).

IMO, this is indicates that automake's behavior is broken, or at
least should be considered confusing, because automake's current
rule set presume using CC assume to be using CC for compiling
assembly (automake explicitly adds -c to the rules to compile
asm-files).

In addition, though using CC for assembly probably is what most
people will use, it adds additional complexity to passing assembler
flags via ASFLAGS (you might need to prefix them to let cc pass them
through). Assuming AS to be using CC will also complicate situations
where people want to apply the assembler directly, eg. because a
c-compiler is not available for their target.

> These days we're trying to get new macros into
> autoconf, not automake.  So if a macro is needed for AS, it should be
> done in autoconf.
IMHO, we need a AC_PROG_AS or AC_PROG_CC_AS in autoconf.

Ralf