🚀 go-pugleaf

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.

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
+-----------------------------------------------+------------------------+
| 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 |
+-----------------------------------------------+------------------------+