Dave Korn wrote:
On 25 May 2007 15:34, Eric Botcazou wrote:
It's no different than any other library used by any other program.
I wouldn't object to configure support to request static gmp/mpfr for
developer convenience, but GCC is a perfectly normal dynamically
linked program and should behave like one IMO.
How a compiler can be "a perfectly normal dynamically linked program",
especially if it's the system compiler? IMHO the less dependencies the
better in this case.
Yes, hasn't this been one of the design goals of gcc for as long as any of
us can remember? It wants to be able to bootstrap the GNU world on non-free
systems from scratch and part of that is not requiring anything other than the
standard headers and libraries distributed with the system - isn't that an
important qualification in terms of the GPL?
That seems like a different issue, though.
Bootstrapping GCC on a system is something that would be solved by
placing GMP and MPFR in the build tree (as has been proposed), and once
they are built as part of the usual bootstrap, it is irrelevant whether
they are linked statically or dynamically. On the other hand, when one
is distributing pre-built binaries of GCC (as in the present discussion)
it irrelevant whether GMP and MPFR are built separately or as part of
the bootstrap, but the question of whether they are dynamically or
statically linked is a significant question.
- Brooks
