Building Tools From Source

[Chris Johns]

Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>
> * The symlinks are a way to build these libraries from source while 
> building GCC. This means static linking and therefore is not 
> necessarily a good idea.
>

I think for RTEMS having these libraries built with GCC (statically linked or not) has advantages. The reasons statically linking can be considered harmful are well known [1] how-ever having these libraries that are an important part of the compiler controlled as part of the compiler's configuration set goes a long way to simplifying the verification and validation audit. If I was currently responsible for building a critical application I would like to be able to audit and provide to the V&V team the exact configuration used for testing, development and release. For me this means aways building the tools from source.

Chris

[1] http://www.akkadia.org/drepper/no_static_linking.html