Re: Re: libtool assumes that "file" is in /usr/bin

[Andreas Florath]

Hello!

Just want to explain in more details what I'm trying to do:

I'm trying to build a set of GNU tools (like gcc, coreutils,
fileutils, ...) for some platforms (Debian, Fedora, Solaris, ...) with
the aim to have the exact same versions of these tools with the same
features and bugs for all these platforms - independent of the patch
level of the system itself.  Just started with Debian, because that
is the fastest machine.

My first attempt was, to build everything in some directory and
specify always options to the configure script, that the dependent
packages are found in this special directory.  The problem with this
attempt was, that some configure scripts want to be more 'intelligent'
than the user (maybe sometimes they are ;-) - resulting in
dependencies to the system where everything was build.

The second attempt is now, to build everything in a chroot
environment: During one stage all and everything that is needed to
build everything (like binutils, gmp, mpfr, gcc, coreutils, libtool,
...) is build in some directory and then copied over to a chroot
environment. During the second stage the resulting packages are build
inside the chroot environment - with the help of the first stage
tools.  (For both stages it is obvious that it is impossible to use
/bin or /usr/bin - so both directories are mostly empty.)

Some thoughts to the discussion:

IMHO it is possible to remove 'file' from a Debian system - but I'm
not sure if then everything to build libtool still remains.

IMHO it's ugly, to have a fixed path to 'file' - but I also understand
that it is a lot of work to implement a heuristic to get the correct
'file'.  My suggestion: when 'file' is really somewhat special, add a
configuration parameter (like --with-find or --use-find) to the
libtools configuration script which defaults to /usr/bin/file.  This
will give the user of the configure script at least the chance to
overwrite the path to 'file' and only adds runtime when creating the
libtool and not when using it.  Also this can be done in a few lines.

Kind Regards

Andreas Florath