On Tue, 16 Jul 2024 at 20:37, Segher Boessenkool <segher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi! > > On Sat, Jul 13, 2024 at 04:52:48PM -0700, Jack Pugmire via Gcc-help wrote: > > Installing gcc with `make install` on x86_64 Linux creates files > > "prefix/bin/c++" and "prefix/bin/g++" that are hard linked together. > > > > It is more convenient for me to make "prefix/bin/c++" a symbolic link to > > g++ instead. > > > > I have two questions: > > - Could doing this break any common processes that interact with g++, e.g. > > detection by CMake or Bazel? > > It could. There are things that see if two things are the same by > looking if they are the same inode. > > > - Why does `make install` create hard links (a/o/t symbolic links) in the > > first place? Maybe not all platforms have symbolic links, but x86_64 Linux > > always does as far as I know. > > Hard links are faster. Hard links are more efficient. Hard links > existed before symbolic links did. > > If you want to have GCC optionally use symbolic links here, implement > that, and send a patch? > > > On many systems, there is a file "/usr/bin/cc" that is a symbolic link to > > gcc (or another C compiler), and this appears to work fine. It also seems > > bad to create hard links like that, so maybe the GCC build files could be > > updated to change this behavior. I could probably do it myself if it would > > be helpful. > > You *cannot* create hardlinks across filesystems, and /usr might well > be a different filesystem. > > > Or maybe there's a good reason for the hard link! Please let me know if > > this is the case. > > Like I said, it is faster, and more efficient. Also, symbolic links do > not exist on all systems, did not exist on many systems GCC was used on > long ago, so historical something? > > Hardlinks do not exist on all systems either, I bet there is some > fallback somewhere already (or this is only done if the system can > handle it anyway). Yes, configure will define LN=cp if hard links are not supported.
