[rescue] Anal-Retentiveness and Source Code

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

> Larry Snyder <larrys at lexis-nexis.com> wrote:
> Last time I did it, I think it was ./configure ; make world.  Dave's
> right, though.  It's long and it's hungry.  But it's kind of a neat thing,
> conceptually: watching a program build itself for all practical purposes.

It's a little more complicated than that, if you want to build gcc-3.0.x
(which you probably don't want to do).  Even if you don't, you can use
the 3.x method to build 2.95.x.  In fact, it's recommended:

   gunzip -c gcc-2.95.3.tar.gz | tar xvf -
   mkdir gcc-obj
   cd gcc-obj
   ../gcc-2.95.3/configure --prefix=/usr/local
   make
   make install

It's recommended because you can then build cross-compilers (or any other
combination of multiple configurations) from one source, instead of from N
source trees.  With GCC growing as quickly as it is, this is a Good Thing.

I'm impressed that GCC keeps rebuilding itself recursively until it's
"happy" with the result.  At least, I thought it -used- to.  It seems to
be hard-coded to two or three trials now.  At least parallel compilation
of GCC works reliably now.

--Jonathan