Subject: bug#11034: Binutils, GDB, GCC and Automake's 'cygnus' option

From: Stefano Lattarini <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:47:40 +0200

On 04/04/2012 01:53 AM, Miles Bader wrote:
> Pedro Alves <[email-masked]> writes:
>>> OK, you've all made clear you have your sensible reasons to have the '.info'
>>
>> ...
>>> it available only though the new, undocumented option named (literally)
>>> "hack!info-in-builddir".  I hope this is acceptable to you.
>> ...
>>> *undocumented* option '!hack!info-in-builddir' (whose name should
>>> made it clear that it is not meant for public consumption).
>>
>> So will this be called a hack forever, or will the naming be revisited
>> before a release?  IMO, either the feature is sensible, and there doesn't
>> seem to be a good reason other users couldn't also use it, and hence it
>> should get a non-hackish name and be documented; or it isn't sensible, and
>> then it shouldn't exist.  Why the second-class treatment?
> 
> I suspect there are better, cleaner, ways to accomplish the underlying
> goal, but I suppose the gcc maintainers don't want to spend the time
> fiddling around with their build infrastructure for such a minor
> issue...
>
Exactly; basically, I wrote the proposed hack because the Binutils, GDB and
GCC packages are important enough that is worth to cater for their unusual
(or even maybe slightly broken) usages, even when that requires a little
extra work on the Automake part.

But then it turned out that the new hack is not really needed, since those
packages already have another hack in place to obtain the behaviour they
want (see my recent answer to Tom), and one that works also with older
Automake releases (back at least to Automake 1.9).

So I've retired my patch, and the hack it introduces.

Regards,
  Stefano