Re: Building binutils "bootstrap"-wise

[Nick Clifton <nickc at cambridge dot redhat dot com>]

Hi Christian,

> I would like to discuss the idea of building the binutils suite
> using a "bootstrap" approach similar to gcc's.
> 
> The idea is to reduce the impact that the system-installed binutils 
> has on the to-build binutils executables and friends and thus its
> test results.  However, this means longer compilation time to build
> the binutils suite.

Hmm - Well there is certainly no reason why bootstrapping targets
could not be included in the makefiles.  I guess it is a question of
whether people would actually use them when testing their patches.

Building binutils at the moment is a relatively quick process.
(Compared to building gcc say).  So I doubt if the extra time required 
to run bootstrap target would be a great deterrent.

Note that the linker testsuite already has a small set of bootstrap
tests (ld/testsuite/ld-bootstrap).

Cheers
        Nick