🚀 go-pugleaf

moss@brl.mil (Gary S. Moss <moss>) writes:

>In article <1028@lysator.liu.se>, pen@lysator.liu.se (Peter Eriksson) writes:
>|> There is one thing I am missing from the otherwise nice Unix world that
>|> I grew accustomed to when in the PRIMOS world, and that is to be able to
>|> specify a default search path for <include> files and "-lfoo" libraries.
>|> 
>|> I know that I can use "-I" and "-L" on the command line, but I think
>|> that it would be much better if there were a mechanism for handling
>|> this using environment variables when I always (or most of the time)
>|> have to add a directory to the search path.
>|> 
>|> What do you folx think? I'm thinking of writing the code needed to
>|> implement this (easy to do in Gcc/cccp.c, haven't looked at the code
>|> for the ld linker).
>I think that depending on environment variables is a bad idea.  The source
>code should compile correctly regardless; it is easy enough to define the
>compiler and loader flags in the makefile, cakefile, Imakefile, or whatever
>you use.  In fact, good software distributions take care of this with a
>top-level configuration file.  It is unlikely that using environment
>variables provides flexibility, typically you always use the same include
>and lib directories to compile a given program.  Also, it would be a pain
>to have to change environment variables when compiling different executables,
>possibly in the same source tree.

Yes, it is pretty easy to define the -I and -L flags in a single Makefile.
It gets boring pretty quick though when one always has to do it....

A real world example; Let's say some guys decides to create a
library with common libraries and another with common include files
and they don't have access to /usr/local/*. (Like to contain
the X11 libs and include files) The way it is now one has
to modify all Makefiles when makeing programs so that they contain
explicit -Ifoo and -Lfoo arguments. Think how much easier it would have
been to just say:

  bar% setenv INCPATH "$HOME/include:/usr/local/include:/usr/include"
  bar% setenv LIBPATH "$HOME/lib:/usr/local/lib:/usr/lib"
  bar% make 

(The "setenv"s would of course be done in the ".login" files or so..)

>I have been bit many times by makefiles that specify "CC=cc" rather than
>/bin/cc when a BSD compiler was required over the System 5 flavor and my
>path had /usr/5bin ahead of /bin (forget why my PATH is that way, it gets
>complicated).  The worst thing is that sometimes the program compiled,
>but didn't work right, the X11R5 server compiled for Sun 3s is an example
>that comes vividly to mind; when compiled with /usr/5bin/cc, it would
>freeze up as soon as one touched the mouse or keyboard.  [Of course I used
>gcc 1.40 to compile it ultimately.]

>-Gary

/Peter

>+-----------------------------------------------+------------------------+
>| Gary Moss					| Internet: moss@brl.mil |
>| Computer Scientist				|    Phone: 410 278-2979 |
>| Ballistic Research Laboratory			|      DSN: 298-2979     |
>| Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, USA 	|      Fax: 410 278-5058 |
>+-----------------------------------------------+------------------------+

--
Peter Eriksson                                              pen@lysator.liu.se
Lysator Computer Club                             ...!uunet!lysator.liu.se!pen
University of Linkoping, Sweden                                  "Try LysKOM!"