On 1/16/2026 1:00 PM, James K. Lowden wrote:
At present libgcobol requires the target to supply libxml2. That
complicates building cross compilers and mitigates against how
distributions are normally built. The remedy is to make libgcobol a
bootstrap library, meaning AIUI that libraries it requires are built
first, so that libgcobol can be built on a vanilla machine, from
scratch, with the target providing nothing more than a C++ compiler.
Let's get some clarity on this paragraph. You say "requires the target
to supply libxml2". I could read that a couple different ways and the
differences are likely meaningful.
So does libxml2 get linked into target code? Or libxml2 needed to build
the compiler itself?
In the former case, we'd likely need a copy in the tree managed like we
do with other target libraries. If it's the later, then we have a lot
more flexibility.
Jeff
