Am I crazy? Does newlib build nothing?

[Jeff Johnston]

On 08/04/2011 05:56 PM, DJ Delorie wrote:
>> Anyway, taking your advice as I understand it, I have tried adding a
>> "--target=i686-pc-linux-gnu" option when I run newlib configure on my
>
> newlib is an embedded library.  As such, there's a limit to which
> targets it supports - it won't build on just anything.  If you want to
> build newlib for something specific, specify that as --host (for
> natives) or --target (for crosses).  As a special exception, to
> prevent naive users from building newlib when they probably don't want
> it, you have to jump through a few hoops to enable newlib (as a
> target) when building for linux (as a host):
>
> ../src/configure --host=i686-pc-linux --with-newlib
>
> If you specify only --target, the top-level configure thinks you're
> cross-compiling, and disables newlib.  If you naively configure for
> linux (the top-level configure is shared among many projects), it
> assumes you don't want newlib unless you explicitly ask for it.
>
> Jeff: any reason why you can't cross-compile to a linux-newlib target?
> That seems like a reasonable thing to want to do.

The current linux newlib implementation punts on a number of header 
files and expects they are installed on the system (i.e. glibc headers 
under linux and bits directories).  The build is fragile and often 
breaks when I upgrade Fedora.

Cross-compiling was never requested.  I'm not sure how much the native 
support is being used.  The one perk it has it that it is a way of 
getting a static C library to use on Linux.

-- Jeff J.