Re: [toplevel] Gas install name problem from autoconf 2.5x

Daniel Jacobowitz
2003-09-03T14:49:31Z

On Tue, Sep 02, 2003 at 09:40:56PM -0700, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@mvista.com> writes:
>
> > I've gotten a report that gas now installs after a native build as
> > $(target_alias)-as. This is presumably the one consequence of autoconf
> > 2.5x's "specify absolutely nothing on the command line unless absolutely
> > necessary" policy.
> >
> > I see two basic choices:
> > - Override AC_CANONICAL_TARGET.
> > - Always pass down --program-transform-name from the top level.
> >
> > I think the latter is the way to go. Any other opinions?
>
> Is this yet another quiet autoconf change? Formerly,
> program_transform_name didn't do anything in the case where host_alias
> and target_alias were the same.
>
> I see that now it does something whenever target_alias is set. I
> can't see any documentation about this behaviour, but then the old
> behaviour probably wasn't documented either.

Yes, that appears to be what's going on.

> I guess my question is: why is --target being passed down from the top
> level in the native case? I thought part of the autoconf conversion
> was that the top level had to stop passing down --target all the time.
>
> Anyhow, I think it would be moderately useful if `make install' worked
> correctly in the gas subdirectory. I don't know what is required to
> make that happen.

Well, up to now, it didn't make any difference. We could use the third
option:
- Don't pass $target unless it was given on the command line.

This is definitely a good idea, but I was going to do that after most
directories had converted. Enough people configure native compilers
now by giving all of build/host/target that I'm not very happy with the
solution.

How do we feel about migrating towards the new autoconf definitions -
i.e. anything with --host is cross-compiled, anything with --target is
a cross-compiler.

--
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software Debian GNU/Linux Developer