Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 10:24:27 -0500 From: Will Andrews <will@physics.purdue.edu> To: Paul Richards <paul@freebsd-services.com> Cc: Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@atg.aciworldwide.com>, Giorgos Keramidas <charon@labs.gr>, Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG>, arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: GNU Compiler Symlinks Message-ID: <20011103102427.I21260@casimir.physics.purdue.edu> In-Reply-To: <763630000.1004565370@lobster.originative.co.uk> References: <200110301650.f9UGof0H009849@atg.aciworldwide.com> <763630000.1004565370@lobster.originative.co.uk>
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On Wed, Oct 31, 2001 at 09:56:10PM -0000, Paul Richards wrote: > > Without discussion there would never be change. I was curious to > > discover the rational for keeping the GNU names for the C compiler > > (but not the other GNU tools). I'm not sure I really received an > > answer, and maybe that's the answer in itself. > > When I originally imported gcc2, for the very first FreeBSD release, I > actually patched it so that it looked like it was cc. Somewhere along the > way this practice stopped for cc but not the other tools. > > It had the benefit in that we could support development versions of gcc > that were installed in /usr/local (ports hadn't been invented then). We > could test newer compilers quite easily that way by just changing CC to be > gcc instead of cc. Likewise, which was an issue at the time with the move > to 2.x versions of gcc, other software that required a newer version of the > compiler could be built using gcc rather than the system's cc. > > I'm not sure who stopped that practice but it was useful. The practice was never stopped. You can install a different compiler on your system and use it. For example, GCC3. Set CC=gcc30. Simple enough. We used to have gcc295 on 3.x for the longest time too. Gcc on FreeBSD as it is is referred to by both 'gcc' and 'cc' for compatibility (i.e. many software packages do not test for whether gcc supports their product but it does, and they use CC=cc). In any case, one of the primary reasons we don't use the GNU names for their utilities is because they cause namespace collisions with other similarly named and similarly utilized tools. Even if one doesn't exist yet, it's safe to assume that it might someday. Hence --program-prefix=g. It's only right in a BSD-centric operating system. -- wca To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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