Alternatives to gcc (was Re: gcc 4.3: when will it become standard compiler?)

[Pedro F. Giffuni]

----- Original Message ----

> On 2009-Jan-09 19:22:38 -0800, "Pedro F. Giffuni" wrote:
> >- Remove gcc from the base and make the compilation depend on a packaged C.. 
> somewhat like was made with perl.
> 
> Not quite the same.  All the build{world,kernel} tools that used perl
> were re-written in sh/awk/C so perl is not required to build/install
> the base system (this was a prerequisite for removing perl).  IMO, the
> FreeBSD base system should come complete with the necessary tools to
> build/install itself.
> 

OK, I quite agree it's not the same as perl: C is not something we cannot depend on.

There was, however, the idea that the installation could be more packaged oriented. The C compiler gets in the way of installing a lighter client. Many users don't need a C compiler as they can use pre-packaged stuff and there's also the issue that we don't really do all that much in-tree development of the development tools.

Pedro.