Re: Building binutils "bootstrap"-wise

[Christian Jönsson <c dot christian dot joensson at telia dot com>]

On Fri, Mar 01, 2002 at 09:13:30AM +0000, Nick Clifton wrote:

Hej Nick

> Hi Christian,
> 
> > I would like to discuss the idea of building the binutils suite
> > using a "bootstrap" approach similar to gcc's.
> > 
> > The idea is to reduce the impact that the system-installed binutils 
> > has on the to-build binutils executables and friends and thus its
> > test results.  However, this means longer compilation time to build
> > the binutils suite.
> 
> Hmm - Well there is certainly no reason why bootstrapping targets
> could not be included in the makefiles.  I guess it is a question of
> whether people would actually use them when testing their patches.

Sure, or even if we'd encourage people to do so...

> 
> Building binutils at the moment is a relatively quick process.
> (Compared to building gcc say).  So I doubt if the extra time required 
> to run bootstrap target would be a great deterrent.

I wouldn't hope so...

> 
> Note that the linker testsuite already has a small set of bootstrap
> tests (ld/testsuite/ld-bootstrap).

I don't follow you on this comment and perhaps I'm unclear about what
I mean. I mean that I would like to have a "three" stage build of the
binutils sources. A first build with the already installed "binutils",
a preliminary build with the first stage built binutils, a "final"
build to check wether there are binary differences in the built files
(*.o mainly...) Such an approach would level some problems at the cost
of some build time.

And, as always, I'm a great guy (humble, right?) in having ideas, I am
not that great in implementing them and suggesting patches... So, I'm
not pushing this, just advocating a little...

Cheers,