Re: Building prog first

[Steffen Dettmer]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010, Reuben Thomas <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 23 March 2010 10:15, Steffen Dettmer wrote:
> > * On Mon, Mar 22, 2010, Reuben Thomas <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > * 2010/3/22 Russell Shaw <address@hidden>:
> > > > [on this ident level, see at the end]
> > > poor support for installing interpreted languages,
> > > and also conversely for build-time compiled programs.
> >
> >  Yes, also for coffee-cooking there is poor support only. :-)
>
> Sure, but autotools is for building programs, not for making coffee.

Yes, but in the same way someone can argue that it is to compile
or cross-compile packages, not to
cross-compile-and-create-tools-on-the-fly.
You can create tools but putting in in an own package (which IMHO
is the common case, usually you do not include compiler or bison
sources etc in the package).

What I wanted to say was that there is a way how autoconf
supports that (having a package for the needed tools), so I would
not like to pay the additional complexity to get a `shorter' way
(which to me even has a bit of a taste of a hack...).

> > I don't think build-time compiled C programs shall be
> > suppored while cross compiling. I think it already is complex
> > enough.  Otherwise you had to do all checks twice and end up
> > in many variables with confusing names, and those who are not
> > cross-compiling probably accidently will mix them.
>
> On the contrary, this is a very useful feature (why should one
> not be able to build host programs when cross-compiling?)

Yes, coffee-cooking also would be a very useful feature (why
should one not be able to have coffee while waiting for the
cross-compilation process?) :-)
SCNR.

Autoconf supports that. Just make a package for the tool and
install it. I know this is inconvenient in your special case.
Also I don't like too big package dependencies (a pain if someone
must install heaps of packages to get something compiled - if
someone here disagree, make an experiment: install a ten years
old linux and install a recent 3D game on it or KDE5 or so :-)).

> for which support in autoconf would simplify developers' life
> (even the ad-hoc support in binutils that I mentioned is pretty
> easy to use).

Yes, I see your point.
But it's complex... How do users specify to use a non-standard
compiler with special flags to compile your helper tool?

> > > > I though of perl, but (A), i don't like slow tools,
> >
> > (I think Perl is fast)
>
> Me too, the above assertion was not written by me! You missed
> the author line at the top from the original author of these
> double-quoted comments.

Yes, I know and the ident level is correct; sorry for not
including the poster's name (I fixed it this time, hopefully
correct, gmail threading is not that good and in my mutt box I
already deleted the older messages).
  (I didn't wrote to you but to the list and I never ever wanted
  to blame or critise anyone!)

oki,

Steffen