[fpc-devel] Proposal to adapt search patch under Haiku using a target specific option (-WH).

[Olivier Coursière]

Some background :

Haiku currently supports two compilers toolchains with two sets of 
libraries and ABI for its 32 bits flavor :
  - gcc 2 for BeOS compatibility
  - gcc 4 (or above : currently 7.3) for newer libraries like Qt (and 
Lazarus).

The default gcc toolchain can be changed using a command line : setarch 
currently accepting x86_gcc2 or x86.
Once this is done, the only practical difference from Freepascal point 
of view is that the search patch should be adapted to use the rights 
libraries according to the context.

A few years ago, i have open the bug 26486 
(https://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=26486) with a first proposal 
that was too hacky to be committed. Since then, i have made another 
proposition involving a new command line switch to let specifying the 
set of search paths when targeting gcc4. This alternative proposal got 
unnoticed since then.

I am currently looking at packaging Lazarus for Haiku and it would 
simplify the process a lot in our Haikuports system (our equivalent of 
Ports in FreeBSD).

So here is the proposal :

I propose to add a -WH option that can accept a "gcc4" parameter to 
specify the alternative option. This is similar to others -W options 
used to specify the kind of applications on the same platform (like -WA 
or -WG for Windows).
It would simplify lazarus building under Haiku using a command like that :

make LCL_PLATFORM=qt OPT="-WHgcc4"

Do you think that kind of options could be upstreamed ? If so, i can 
update the patch to match current sources and maybe use the same option 
names as setarch to specify the platform.

If not, i can still patch freepascal sources before packaging freepascal 
for Haiku through our haikuports system. But it would be, in my opinion, 
less practical on the long term.

Or maybe someone will come up with a better idea to handle that kind of 
problems ?

What do you think about this proposal ?