Re: Building GDB 7.3.92 with MinGW

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz at gnu dot org>]

> Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:16:44 +0800
> From: asmwarrior <asmwarrior@gmail.com>
> CC: gdb-patches@sourceware.org
> 
> I have just look at my notes half years ago(no time to write a complete session right now), the issue is:
> In the file:
> 
> build\gdb\config.status
> 
> The value is hard-coded:
> 
> D["DEBUGDIR"]=" \"/mingw/lib/debug\""
> D["DEBUGDIR_RELOCATABLE"]=" 1"
> D["GDB_DATADIR"]=" \"/mingw/share/gdb\""

This is not hard-coded, this comes from the --prefix argument you
passed to the configure script.  In my config.status it shows the
correct directory.

There's a problem loosely related to the MinGW build, whereby it is
customary on MS-Windows to move the built binaries to another machine,
e.g. if one downloads pre-built binaries from some site, like the
MinGW site.  If the --prefix value used by whoever built the package
does not fit the end-user's filesystem and/or the top-level directory
under which the binary distro is unpacked, then things will not work.

So I think in the long run it would be a Good Thing for GDB to try to
look for its data files relative to the place where the executable is
installed, and not only on Windows.  But that is a separate project;
at least I would love to see patches along these lines.

> It is quite simple to test whether GDB set the python path correctly, just run:
> 
> python print gdb.PYTHONDIR
> 
> If it shows the correct path, then it's good.

The above works correctly for me in the GDB I just built with MinGW.