Re: bdf.h requires config.h

[Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>]

Hi Benson,

> the bfd.h header file when compiling.  Have built binutils-2.3.1 from

Just to be clear, do you mean binutils version 2.31 rather than 2.3.1 ?
Version 2.3.1 would be extremely old...

> source. In this version of binutils, bfd.h seems to require a
> configure.h header file.

Again, just to be clear.  Do you mean "config.h" rather than "configure.h".
As far as I know there is no header file called "configure.h".

> What information do PACKAGE,> PACKAGE_VERSION and config.h provide 

The PACKAGE and PACKAGE_VERSION definitions would normally
be "binutils" and the version of binutils being built.

config.h however is much more than that.  It contains a whole
series of pre-processor declarations that are set if a particular 
feature is present in the build environment.  So for example
HAVE_LONG_LONG is defined if the compiler supports the "long long"
type and HAVE_SYS_TIME_H is defined if the <sys/time.h> header file 
is available.

See also this PR for more details:

  https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14072

> and would there be any other
> mechanisms to provide this information that might be more portable?

The config.h header file is normally generated by running the 
configure script at the top level of the binutils sources.  This
script is intended to be portable to a very wide variety of systems.

So in essence the answer to your question is no, there is no better
way to provide this information.

Cheers
  Nick