Subject: Re: Binutils and GCC [LONG and mildly OT]
From: Christopher Faylor <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 11:25:18 -0400

On Thu, Sep 20, 2001 at 01:37:27AM -0400, Christopher Currie wrote:
>Sorry for the cross-posting, but this regards a bug in libiberty and I
>don't know whether gcc or binutils has ownership of it.

If you are going to take it upon yourself to take a cygwin problem into
other mailing lists, you really should check out the CVS sources to see
if this has actually been solved or not.

>On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 11:47:01AM -0400, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> It is just C source code we're talking about, right?  You have an editor?
>> Look at the place where the errors are coming from and make an
>> educated guess about fixing it.
>> 
>> What is the worse that can happen?  If you screw up do you think that
>> this will cause gcc to subtly miscompile your code so that all of the
>> add instructions are turned into sub instructions or something?  That's
>> not going to happen.
>> 
>> You are all programmers right?  Inspect the code.  Invest five minutes
>> worth of analysis into the problem.
>> 
>> If this is too tough for you, try removing the offending file from the
>> makefile or building from CVS sources.
>> 
>> I can't believe that there are three messages on this subject from people
>> who are apparently programmers without one suggested fix.
>
><rant>
>Probably because most of them are busy trying use the tools to do the
>work they get paid to do, rather than spend the time fixing the tools.
>Since backing out to the previous version allows them to do that, they've
>done what's expected of them and logged a bug report that (IMHO) helps
>a maintainer (who, I would think, either has volunteered or is paid to
>do such things) track down what might be causing the problem.
></rant>

Some points:

1) No one is paid to support this code.

2) No one has volunteered to support other people's efforts to compile the
   code.

3) No one was asking for a definitive fix.  I was basically commenting on
   how strange it was that people who are supposed to be programmers were
   stalled for days over a problem that could have been solved by an #ifdef.
   The problem has been fixed definitively in sources.redhat.com CVS sources
   for weeks.  However, that fix won't magically propagate to older source
   tar balls.  So, a brain-dead simple fix to strerror.c is required.

   Either that or you can use the solution THAT I ALREADY SUGGESTED.

4) If someone is building the code on their own rather than using the binaries
   that *I did* volunteer to provide then it is either part of their job or
   they have some other reason for doing it.  It's not part of my job in
   any way to track down their problems for them.  I could build the programs
   just fine when I released them.  If that changes over time, I'm not going
   to make a new release just to satisfy people who want to build things on
   their own.  If someone needs to do that then they really should know what
   they are doing.  Either that or they should pay someone to support them.
   Or, they could try to use the *latest* versions of the sources where any
   problems would be solved.

5) Even if we were to buy into your theory that I have either volunteered
   to help you build the tools or your even more inane theory that I am
   actually being *paid* to help people for free; merely reporting a problem
   with no more analysis than a cut and paste of an error message is hardly
   a way to help me out.  Even if it was a vague help, the majority of this
   thread was comprised of "I am stalled too! I need a fix!" messages which
   conveyed no useful information.

I haven't looked at your patch.  You seem competent so I assume that it
solves your problem.

I also assume that a patch won't help most of the original posters who
were complaining in the cygwin mailing list since it will require them
to learn about both patch and autoconf.  However, maybe there are some
other previously silent but competent people like you who were also
silently fuming over the injustice of not being able to compile their
own version of the tools and maybe they will be able to use the solution
that you provided.

Or, you could always just remove strerror from the Makefile like I
originally suggested...

cgf

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