On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, Rob Landley wrote:
On Thursday 11 October 2007 11:26:07 am Finn Thain wrote:
My toolchains override the default prefix to just the target, resulting
in "m68k-gcc". (It's shorter, and when you're creating a dozen toolchains
having them all say -linux- in the middle of every command name gets a bit
silly...)
When it started complaining about "m68k-linux-gnu-gcc" (which is _not_ what my
cross compiler is called) I spent half an hour tracking down where it was
getting that name from and what exactly was going on. (Was my build script
supplying the wrong name? Did something set an environment variable it
shouldn't have? Did the gcc build suddenly reveal another strange buried
corner case that made it revert to a default against explicit instructions
_again_?)
When I found the surprising behavior that cost me time and effort to diagnose,
I submitted a patch so it wouldn't confuse future developers the first time
_they_ try to build m68k. (Yes, I think there might be such. Call me
crazy.) I've seen "didn't specify any cross compiler" failures before, on
arm and x86-64 and mips and sparc and so on. I've seen it in the linux
kernel, in busybox, in uClibc, and in various gnu packages
with ./configureitis. This is the first time I've seen a package confidently
decide for itself to use a compiler name that isn't in the $PATH, and
especially the first time I've seen Linux do it. It cost me time to
disagnose because it looks like it's getting a CROSS_COMPILE setting from its
environment somehow, and the logical thing to do is look at that environment
(and the build scripts driving it, and the temp files) to see where such a
thing might be leaking in from. The fact it might be hallucinating its own
value was not my first guess, because nothing else I've encountered does that
in this context.
This wasn't an issue before we came to depend on cross compilers. Since we
tend to need them more as compilation becomes more expensive, IMHO we
should follow the practice of the embedded architectures.
That topic's a can of worms, but I point out that you always needed a cross
compiler to bootstrap a new platform. :)
If you're going to support cross compiling at all, you might as well do it
more or less consistently for all targets.
If your cross-compiler is called differently than the default on in
arch/*/Makefile, what's the problem with calling?
make ARCH=myarch CROSS_COMPILE=my-cross-compile-prefx-
This has been working for +10 years on all non-ia32 platforms I ever worked on.
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
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