On Fri, 2006-06-16 at 17:04 +1200, Michael J. Knox wrote:
Ralf Corsepius wrote:
On Thu, 2006-06-15 at 23:19 -0500, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
>> "RC" == Ralf Corsepius rc040203@freenet.de writes:
RC> Why?
What is "i386" and why does it have a subpackage of "rtems4.7"?
RC> This name is the name being used for GNU crosstool toolchains for RC> many years (> a decade). It corresponds to the target RC> canonicalization tuple internally being used by binutils/gcc/gdb, RC> and the autotools.
So?
Yes. Target canonicalization tuples are standardized (In particular in binutils, GCC and gdb) and shared between *all* projects using config.guess and config.sub (I.e. all package using the autotools).
We are free to make decisions for ourselves instead of blindly using someone else's naming convention.
Yes, it's our freedom to waste time on re- and over engineering parts others have spend decades on.
A gcc cross compiler's components are called <target>-<component>
You can even find traces of this in Fedora: e.g. /usr/bin/i386-redhat-linux-gcc /usr/bin/i386-redhat-linux-c++
I.e. people will be looking for <target>-<tool>
If the name is completely confusing (as it is to me) then surely we should talk about it before just stuffing it into the repository.
Would packages be called i386-cygwin-gcc or i386-redhat-gcc i586-suse-gcc sparc-sun-solaris2.8-gcc
be confusing to you?
IMO, they are self-explanatory.
Why is the binary target name being used for the package name? That's not intuitive to an end user at all IMHO.
I think confusing the binary target name with the actual package name is a mistake.
gcc is gcc, not i386-redhat-linux-gcc
Wrong. What you have installed is an i386-redhat-linux-gcc rsp. a x86-68-redhat-linux-gcc (more precisely, a GCC having been configured for host=<arch>-redhat-linux). As this gcc also is the native gcc, it also is being installed as "gcc", which justifies the package to be called gcc.
OpenSUSE uses cross-<arch>-gcc/binutils/whatever-version debian looks like it uses gcc/binutils/whatever-<arch>-version
What is the <whatever>? That's the essential part of it.
A "cross-i386-gcc" would be complete non-sense, because a cross tool chain depends on the OS and several components more. An i386-rtems4.7-gcc is something very different from a i386-cygwin-gcc or a i386-redhat-gcc or a i386-suse-gcc.
I presume they are abbreviating and using <arch> as a synonym for "<arch>-suse-linux".
... Debian ..., their packaging is the worst of all possible choices. It's neither browsable, nor complete nor correct, nor current. Basically looks like rotten packages to me.
Personally I like the cross-prefix, its a lot more obvious to an end user what the package is and is for, but thats just me.
Everybody being used to cross tool chains, knows that the tools insided are called <target>-<tools>.
Finally a different view on this issue: A GNU cross toolchain consists of several packages which comes in different, multiple incarnations.
Packaging-wise, this situation is not any different from packages which can be built against different base infrastructures, say:
xorg-mydriver vs. xfree-mydriver gnome-coolguitool vs. kde-coolguitool perl-XXXX perl7-XXXX or (Real world example) Coin2-* vs. Inventor-*
Ralf