[gentoo-dev] USE flags and static libs

[gentoo-dev] USE flags and static libs

[Alexander Holler]

Hi,

I like brainstorming. ;)

I've mentioned it before as a remark in another msg, I would find it nice 
to have a USE flag tests mentioned in the documentation. This could inspire 
some developers to call 'make tests' or similiar before installing if 
something is provided by the makefile of the package.

I also want to discuss the building of static libs. Right now all or most 
of the static libs are build with the flags from make.conf. The problem 
with that is that this prevents building binaries (which uses them) to give 
away (or for using on other machines). E.g. a binary build with march=i686 
won't run on k6.

This could lead to some 'hard to find' problems if someone forgets this.

I've two aproaches to this problem:

1. Building all static libs without march flags.

2. Introduce a USE flag i386static
This could be used to build additional static libs with a postfix i386. 
E.g.
libncurses.a and libncurses_i386.a.

I would prefer the second approach. Like the USE flag 'tests', just 
describing it in the appropriate developer docs could be enough to get that 
into (some) future ebuilds.

Comments?


Regards,

Alexander

Re: [gentoo-dev] USE flags and static libs

[Alexander Holler]

Just as a hint for developers:

--On Samstag, Juni 08, 2002 15:16:40 +0200 Alexander Holler 
<holler@ahsoftware.de> wrote:

> 1. Building all static libs without march flags.
>
> 2. Introduce a USE flag i386static
> This could be used to build additional static libs with a postfix i386.
> E.g. libncurses.a and libncurses_i386.a.

This could be easily done replacing -march with -mcpu:

CFLAGS=`echo $CFLAGS | sed -e 's/-march/-mcpu/'`

The same applies to the CXXFLAGS.
According to the gcc docs, this leads to binaries which are something 
optimized for the specific cpu but are running on all cpus.

Alexander

Re: [gentoo-dev] USE flags and static libs

[Alexander Gretencord]

On Saturday 08 June 2002 15:16, Alexander Holler wrote:
> I've mentioned it before as a remark in another msg, I would find it nice
> to have a USE flag tests mentioned in the documentation. This could inspire
> some developers to call 'make tests' or similiar before installing if
> something is provided by the makefile of the package.

I think if there is a "make test" target like there is for things like 
postgres. The postgres ebuild unfortunately does not run "make test".

The user can specify any CFLAGS he likes in make.conf and the postgres ebuild 
will happily take them. But it has happened to me that "make test" broke 
(giving times like 11:59:60 instead of 12:00:00). This would not be detected 
by the ebuild and the user might later on experience problems without having 
a clue about what happens. If postgres has this test target to make sure 
everything works, I think the ebuild should run it. Especially for the gentoo 
server distribution this has to be done!

Alex

-- 
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety 
deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin