Re: Remove USE_GCC_RUNTIME?

[Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%mnx.io@localhost>]

* On 2023-08-11 at 09:56 BST, nia wrote:

> Hey, since the recent talks where people expressed a distate for
> GCC-specific hacks in pkgsrc, I wonder whether it's worth bringing
> this variable up:
>
> # USE_GCC_RUNTIME
> #       Packages which build shared libraries but do not use libtool to
> #       do so should define this variable.  It is used to determine whether
> #       the gcc runtime should be depended upon when a user has enabled
> #       USE_PKGSRC_GCC_RUNTIME.
>
> In my opinion this is a historical wart - not using libtool (while
> unfortunate) is increasingly common with more packages using cmake/meson
> instead. In my eyes the gcc runtime should be depended upon whenever
> USE_PKGSRC_GCC_RUNTIME is set.

The problem, as I explain in:

  https://github.com/NetBSD/pkgsrc/blob/trunk/mk/compiler/gcc.mk#L723-L731

is that doing it by default will cause circular dependencies.  I'm not 
hugely against removing it, I for many years now have had my own variant 
using:

  https://github.com/TritonDataCenter/pkgbuild/blob/master/include/gcc-libs.mk

instead which just sets _USE_GCC_SHLIB=yes directly for anything not in 
the gcc build path.

It's just yet another area where the out of the box experience is likely 
to be terrible, and removing this will probably make it worse, but I 
really dislike all of our compiler magic and would lean towards making 
it simpler to reason about.

--
Jonathan Perkin   -   mnx.io   -   pkgsrc.smartos.org
Open Source Complete Cloud   www.tritondatacenter.com