Re: Totally Gormless

[Armando Di Cianno]

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On 2005-10-11 09:44:45 -0400 Nicola Pero
<nicola.pero@operatelecom.com> wrote:

> > 1) If you compiled gnustep-make with CFLAGS="-fXXX" then gnustep-make
> > adds CFLAGS="-fXXX" to every library/applications build (personally, 
> > I
> > find this annoying and somewhat "wrong").  I believe (iirc)  that it
> > does honor CFLAGS as well, but then you'd have to explicitly say
> > CFLAGS="-fno-XXX" to the CFLAGS you are changing, if you don't
> > recompile gnustep-make with the real set of CFLAGS you want for all
> > apps.
>
> Thanks ... you're probably talking about the fact that if you 
> configure
> gnustep-make with CFLAGS="-fXXX" then gnustep-make adds -fXXX to any
> compilation command ? :-)

Yes.

> Any reasons why this is annoying ?  I'd have imagined that if you 
> didn't
> want the CFLAGS to be used when compiling ... you just wouldn't use 
> them
> in gnustep-make's ./configure! ;-)

IIRC, this is covered by the OPTFLAGS variable in the GNUstep
Makefiles.  The problem comes from the fact that OPTFLAGS is not
necessarily equal to CFLAGS.  If gnustep-make is compiled with
CFLAGS="-Os -fomit-frame-pointer" (as the previous example), but then
one discovers that -fomit-frame-pointer is breaking something (as it
does with seemingly random objc related code, not to mention ffcall),
one should be able to simply set CFLAGS="-Os", and not have to worry
about other CFLAGS coming in from seemingly nowhere.  In other words,
to chage the CFLAGS stated previously, you can't do CFLAGS="-Os", but
you have to do CFLAGS="-Os -fno-omit-frame-pointer".

Honestly, I think OPTFLAGS should be removed because:
- - if you use a binary distro, it doesn't matter
- - if you are compiliing by hand "export CFLAGS="-fmy-flags" should
work just fine
- - if you use a source base distro, CFLAGS is generally managed from
one location

In the end, this doesn't really matter overall, but it is annoying,
because when one wants to "monkey around" with CFLAGS one isn't
expecting the gnustep-make package to already be monkeying around with
stuff.  If I compile gnustep-make with CFLAGS="-fmy-flags" I should be
able to assume that only gnustep-make is compiled with those flags
(for the few C programs it has).

> Any special sort of granularity you need that is not covered by this ?

It's just that gnustep-make can successfully be compiled with CFLAGS
that *will break* objc code ... so I think it's a configuration option
best specific via the environment, and not an option file.

- ------------------

On an unrelated note, I've been working on removing the C code from
gnustep-make, as well as making it generally relocatable.  You "own" /
maintain the gnustep-make package, correct?  If so, would you be up
for some review of this?  I would find it extremely helpful -- the
GNUstep build system was the #1 problem with installation on Gentoo
(via portage); there are also some minor, but gravely annoying bugs in
the most recent releases like "user_home helper program gives
different results than gnustep-base" (which I've fixes for).

__Armando Di Cianno
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