Re: On the toplevel configure and build system

[Paolo Bonzini <bonzini@gnu.org>]

On 03/30/2011 05:15 PM, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Mar 2011, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
>
>> Specifically, I propose removal of all support for building: ash autoconf
>> automake bash byacc bzip2 diff dosutils fileutils findutils find gawk
>> gettext gnuserv gzip hello indent libiconv libtool make mmalloc patch perl
>> prms rcs release recode sed send-pr shellutils tar textutils time uudecode
>> wdiff zip expect guile target-gperf target-examples target-qthreads.  See
>> <http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2011-03/msg01674.html>  and followups
>> regarding reasons to keep a few packages in my original list that aren't
>> in the list above.
>
> There's been push-back on libiconv and expect.

I still think expect has no reason to stay in the toplevel (not any more 
than tcl or tk).

dejagnu is another story, and there's good reasons for leaving libiconv 
as well.

> 2'. If the combination of directories present in the source tree would not
> build and install anything for the host or target (other than host
> libraries such as libiberty) then there should be an error at configure or
> build time.  For example, a GCC source tree should not quietly build
> nothing because GCC isn't supported for the target; a binutils+gdb tree
> should not quietly build nothing for lack of BFD support, although it
> might build only a subset of binutils if ld and gdb aren't supported.

Agreed.

Paolo