On 2012-07-02 06:52, Wookey wrote: > The disadvantage of the way it's currently done is that if a > knowledgeable user installs gcc-4.7-<triplet> they get a toolchain > that doesn't work.
AFAICT, this applies to the native compiler packages as well. A user can install gcc-4.7 without installing gcc. However, I think users tend to install gcc rather than a real versioned package like gcc-4.7. And more to the point, build-essential depends on gcc, not on gcc-4.7. But it's not that the toolchain "doesn't work" per se if a user doesn't install gcc or gcc-<triplet>. Basically, a user who installs only a versioned compiler package (e.g. gcc-4.7) gets only a versioned compiler name (/usr/bin/gcc-4.7). But for a user who installs gcc and/or build-essential, things will Just Work. As I mentioned before [1], I'd like to make this Just Work with crossbuild-essential-<target> packages [2][3] as well by depending on gcc-<triplet> and g++-<triplet> rather than gcc-4.7-<triplet> and g++-4.7-<triplet>. > My questions are: > how does it work for native gcc? src:gcc-defaults builds a number of metapackages (gcc, cpp, g++, ...). Each of these depends on the default version of a tool and provides a symbolic link to it. For example, the gcc package in sid currently depends on cpp (>= 4:4.7.1-1) and gcc-4.7 (>= 4.7.1-1~) and provides a link at /usr/bin/gcc to /usr/bin/gcc-4.7. So when a user runs `gcc foo.c` or natively builds a Debian package that contains C code, he/she is using a symbolic link provided by a metapackage. If a user wants to use a version of GCC (e.g. 4.6) other than the current Debian default, he/she can just run the executable directly (e.g. `gcc-4.6 foo.c`). Setting the "CC" variable to the desired version of the compiler should suffice for building most packages. In other cases, manually changing the symbolic link at /usr/bin/gcc is of course always an option. > And reason not to do the same thing in cross-world? None as far as I can tell. That's why I proposed that we do so. :) [1]: http://lists.mister-muffin.de/pipermail/debian-bootstrap/2012-July/000248.html [2]: http://bootstrap.pehjota.net/build-essential/ [3]: http://bootstrap.pehjota.net/archive/pool/main/c/cross-build-essenti -- P. J. McDermott (_/@\_) ,--. http://www.pehjota.net/ o < o o > / oo \ http://www.pehjota.net/contact.html o \ `-/ | <> |. o o o "~v /_\--/_/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
