>Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 10:32:38 -0500
>From: "John F. Woods" <jfw@jfwhome.funhouse.com>

>Now here's a cool thought:  invent some mechanism to add to the system Makefile
>whereby it would first check the version number of all the system tools, and
>would warn you if, say,
>                        YOU NEED TO UPDATE LINT
>                                                in order to build something.
>(It would probably be better to put these checks into each individual makefile,
>but that would result in a lot of repeated checks.)
>
>Of course, then you get into the question of how to record the versions of all
>the tools; many of them already have numbering schemes which are externally
>imposed and not changed every time a tiny little fix is added by NetBSD, and
>of course there's no option flag you could add to every command to get them
>to print out some kind of version information.

Perhaps a better idea would be to add a 'tools' or 'bootstrap' target
to the build system.  The new target would build and install all of
the utilities usually used by the build system, e.g. gcc, gas, ld, nm,
tsort, flex, yacc, &c.  It could also do so in a way that minimizes
the number of tools used in the process, e.g. it could use flex's
initscan.c instead of scan.l.  If we really want to get cute we could
even rearrange the order such that the whole process only needs a
minimal set of tools (gcc, gas, ld) at the start.  Thoughts?
-- 
Mike Long <mikel@shore.net>                http://www.shore.net/~mikel
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands,
hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -- H.L. Mencken