[csw-maintainers] Reasons for gcc to have a separate prefix

[Maciej Bliziński]

2011/8/26 Ben Walton <bwalton at opencsw.org>:
> Excerpts from Maciej Bliziński's message of Thu Aug 25 07:23:26 -0400 2011:
>
> Hi Maciej,
>
>> Do you recall the reasons to compile gcc into a different prefix,
>> and do you think these reasons still apply today?
>
> I'd definitely love to see gcc move into /opt/csw.  Alternatives
> should make this possible.  A symlink from /opt/csw/gcc4 -> /opt/csw
> should be provided if such a move is ever attempted though so that
> things with the path coded in continue working.

I've got now a working set of packages with binaries in /opt/csw and
alternatives, just the way Peter Felecan has suggested.  Currently,
there's no /opt/csw/gcc4 compatibility layer.  It's time to tackle
this issue.

I'm afraid that we cannot create the /opt/csw/gcc4 → /opt/csw symlink.
Imagine a scenario where someone puts a file under /opt/csw/gcc4 -
pkgrm will not remove this directory. I'm not sure what happens when
you try to install a symlink over a path which is already a directory,
but I'm fairly certain that you won't make pkgadd happy that way.
We'd better provide symlinks for individual files. For example:

/opt/csw/gcc4/bin/gcc → ../../bin/gcc-4.6

All other links accordingly.

Does that look good?

Maciej