[fpc-devel] Name of Make executable may cause errors during makes

[Jonas Maebe]

On 09 May 2009, at 04:57, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk wrote:

[make, ld]
> (1)
> Supply these programs as recompiled to display information about  
> themselves .

These programs are GNU make, GNU ld, etc (i.e., we don't write these  
tools nor define how they behave). These behave according to their own  
(unix) conventions. To get information about these binaries, use "make  
--version", "as --version" etc.

> (ii)
> Change their names as specific  to FPC  such as fpc-ld.exe , fpc- 
> make.exe , etc.  ,   OR
> in  ALL of the  Makefile  statements  using these programs , use  
> explicit paths
> of their names to avoid mix-up with other same programs .

This would be a bad idea, because
a) it would make the Windows version behave differently from the unix  
versions (thus requiring special mention in the documentation, and  
making things difficult for people working both under unix and Windows)
b) it would make it more difficult for people who have one copy of GNU  
make/ld/as on their system to have fpc use this copy (it's not just  
fpc that uses these tools)
c) it would require all kinds of modifications to the compiler to use  
special names on particular platforms, making maintenance hardr.

> (iii)
> In installation notes , ALWAYS specify the above point and how to  
> use a proper make
> executable .

It can of course be stressed in the installation notes.


Jonas