Corrupted C Compiler

[Jan Grant]

On Mon, 4 Dec 2006, Rachel Florentine wrote:

> Hi;
> I entered the following stupid command: cp -R /* /ad2 thinking that 
> would copy the contents of my working HD to my new 1/2 teraflop HD 
> (ad2). What it did was manage to wipe out some very important files 
> (thank goodness I had up-to-date backups) and it appears to have 
> corrupted gcc...my C compiler. I deduce this because when I go to build 
> Zope (as an example) from source I have to run a script afterwards that 
> repairs the broken C files. (This, strangely, is not the case if I build 
> Zope from port.) So, my questions for you programmers more experienced 
> than I, are:
> 
> 1) Does my assessment make sense? Is gcc corrupt?

I don't think it makes much sense, no. Zope is python-based and unless 
you're building products that rely on native libraries, what you 
describe doesn't sound like an accurate diagnosis. It's more likely 
(this is a stab in the dark) that you're running a script to regerate 
.pyc files; these are precompiled python bytecode files that are built 
from the corresponding .py files.

That's a part and parcel of readying Zope for production - however, Zope 
will run without those .pyc files (the .py files are compiled on first 
load instead).

I suspect that that's what's going on.
Cheers,
jan

-- 
jan grant, ISYS, University of Bristol. http://www.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44 (0)117 3317661   http://ioctl.org/jan/
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