should we ship linkable gmp/mpfr/mpc or hide them?

[matthew green <mrg%eterna.com.au@localhost>]

hi folks.


i'm trying to decide if we should ship gmp/mpfr/mpc as something
private to gcc4.5 or first-class part of the base system.

here are the pros and cons i've been considering:

pro:
        - linked against shared lib*.so [*]
        - pkgsrc doesn't have to install them

cons:
        - cc1, cc1obj and cc1plus linked against lib*.a
        - can't build eg, lint for alpha due to issues with the
          sources that are not trivial to fix
        - if pkgsrc has never versions, we have potential weird
          issues at link or run time for binaries
        - building the compat, lint, etc. versions takes extra
          time in the build.

[*] we could do this with private copy in /usr/lib/gcc/*.so.

i'm (obviously) tending towards having them be just for GCC and
not full class citizens, but i'm interested in other folks
opinions and additions to my pro/con list.

what do you think?

thanks.


.mrg.