bdf.h requires config.h

[Benson Muite]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for your answers.

On 11/29/18 12:20 PM, Nick Clifton wrote:
> 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...
Yes 2.31
>
>> 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".
Should be config.h thanks.
>
>> 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.
Thanks.
>
> 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.
Thanks. It was not clear how to find this.
>
> So in essence the answer to your question is no, there is no better
> way to provide this information.
>
> Cheers
>   Nick

Might it be possible to have a more informative error message? For
example, indicating that either config.h file comes from the binutils
configuration (there can be large number of config.h files from other
packages) or that at some point one should define PACKAGE and
PACKAGE_VERSION to be the "binutils" and the binutils version respectively?


Regards,

Benson