On Sat, 2 Jun 2001, matthew green wrote:

:    The basic concept here is that the build tools are completely separate from
:    the installed tools.  You can use the installed tools to create pkgs,
:    compile third party src, and even compile xsrc.  "src", however, is so much
:    in motion that using the host's tools is a recipe for disaster--that's a
:    well established fact.  (Think what will happen if I just flipped on the new
:    binutils and gcc in the old build structure and things like libgcc or
:    libstdc++ built out of a very specific order....)
:
: it is well known that this is sometimes frail.  there are some of us who
: believe in doing (at least) a dual-build so that you end up building the
: tree with itself.  that, to me, is the *only* failsafe way of building a
: netbsd release/snapshot.

A dual-build is simply a way of saying you want to build the tree with the
in-tree builds, which is *precisely* what the new build harness will be
doing -- without going to the length of compiling all the other (not
relevant to the toolchain) programs twice.  The major difference is that a
dual-build cannot cope properly with bootstrapping changed tooolchain bits,
whereas the build harness, by taking the stance of "always cross-compiling",
can reliably reproduce the same code no matter what the host system.

I don't see a reason to make this optional.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>  *  Wasabi NetBSD:  Run with it.
-- NetBSD 1.5 now available on CD-ROM  --  http://www.wasabisystems.com/