[Nix-dev] Update on distro bootstrapping with Guix

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

Eelco Dolstra <eelco.dolstra at logicblox.com> skribis:

> On 05/10/12 12:05, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>
>> There’s no GCC wrapper.  Instead, GCC’s default spec strings are
>> modified to match our file system layout.
>
> Cool.  Do you think getting rid of the GCC wrapper would be feasible for
> Nixpkgs?  (Probably not...)

Yes, I think so.  It boils down to using $CPATH and $LIBRARY_PATH,
patching the spec strings to have the right -Wl,-dynamic-linker flag, etc.

As for ‘ld’, GCC will just use any ‘ld’ found in $PATH.

The main difficulty would be that a subset of the packages rely on
$NIX_CFLAGS, $NIX_LDFLAGS, and co., I think.

>> GMP/MPFR/MPC as built as part of the GCC build process, instead of being
>> built separately, which is an appreciable simplification.
>
> Hm yes :-)  Is this a feature of the GCC build process (like the libstdc++
> build) or do you do it yourself?

It’s a feature of GCC’s build system (info "(gccinstall) Downloading the
source").

>> Another difference from Nixpkgs is that the initial set of bootstrap
>> tools is reduced: GNU Make, Findutils, and Diffutils are lacking, and
>> get built early.  
>
> How do you manage to build those packages without Make?

The first step is to build Make, of course.  :-)  It comes with a shell
script to build itself.

Thanks,
Ludo’.