suggestion for toolchain to have its own directories

[David Chisnall]

On 30 Jun 2017, at 21:35, Sid <sid at bsdmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Wouldn't it make sense for toolchains, compilers and their libraries to have their own dedicated top level directories like something under /usr/toolchain/ and /usr/local/toolchain/ in the latest FreeBSD versions? It would be easier for maintenance, and organization of compilers and toolchain components.

Debian does something like this, and it’s a huge pain to work with.  The problem is that toolchains are not self-contained monolithic components (though gcc likes to pretend that they are).  For example, we want gcc and clang to use the same linker, the same C and C++ standard library implementations, and the same system headers, irrespective of the compiler version.  Things that actually are private to a compiler are in separate directories (see /usr/lib/clang, for example).

David