Fixing -pthreads (Re: ports and -current)

[Loren James Rittle]

> I'm all for removing it, but our FSF GCC maintainer thought
> it better to make it a NOOP.  We're just going by his advice.

I agreed that making -pthread == NOOP was probably better than the
~Sept 5 -CURRENT system compiler however that was not my full advice.

In my view (and thus my advice), it is the stated collective opinion
of the FSF gcc development team that -pthread should exist for all gcc
ports which support POSIX threads.  This is true even if not well
documented.  It would be best if adding the switch actually implied
everything to support threads.

If adding the -pthread switch is a NOOP to gcc but users could later
add (e.g.): LD_PRELOAD=libc_r.so (or one of the newer choices) and not
break anything, then I think that would be fully acceptable and meet
the specification of the switch.  This would be very cool in that you
could test/run against multiple thread libraries without a re-link.

If adding the -pthread switch is a NOOP to gcc but users must also add
-lc_r (or one of the newer choices) for correct operation, then I
think making it a NOOP is a bad idea and I attempted to state so.

Regards,
Loren