Re: [RFC] Add expat to the GDB sources

[Mark Kettenis <mark.kettenis@xs4all.nl>]

> Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 18:34:13 -0400
> From: Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>
> 
> 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.

Where do you think my frstration about external dependencies comes
from ;-).  However, GCC will build fine without most of those
packages: without GMP/MPFR you won't get gfortran, and without zip you
won't get gjc/libjava.  But at least you can still build the C
compiler, which you can then use to build the other dependencies.

I think the GNU Make requirements are a serious mistake by the GCC
developers.

Translated to GDB this would mean that without expat you'd still get a
usable gdb, but loose goodies like the new flash support (which isn't
terribly useful for a native gdb anyway).