Re: [RFC] Add expat to the GDB sources

Daniel Jacobowitz
2006-07-24T22:34:19Z

On Tue, Jul 25, 2006 at 12:29:28AM +0200, Mark Kettenis wrote:
> > But, where does this philosophy end? Are you *really* advocating that
> > every shipping package should include the source code of any libraries
> > that they use? So gdb should also include ncurses?
>
> The philosophy has always been that one should be able to build a GNU
> toolchain without any external dependencies, to be able to bootstrap
> into a situation wher you can use the toolchain to build other Free
> Software.

When was the last time you tried to build GCC? Even just building it
has pretty hefty requirements:

http://gcc.gnu.org/install/prerequisites.html

GMP/MPFR and zip fill the same sort of role that expat and readline
would. The GNU Make version requirement also often needs to be
manually met by users wanting to build GCC - lots of systems don't have
an adequate Make for the GCC build system.

I don't think that expecting everything to come out of the box is
realistic any more.

--
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery