>    The cleandir step in tools/ happens at a different time than it does in the
   >    rest of src/ -- tools/ only does that immediately before rebuilding an
   >    out-of-date tool.  Why would you want to disable that step, given my
   >    comments about version skew risk?
   >
   > the main reason is that if i'm hacking one of the tools, i don't want
   > to be forced to rebuild it from scratch if i can help it.  as it appears
   > to stand today, if i change gcc some how, i'll have to rebuild it all
   > the way from scratch.  that's a problem.
   
   In that case, wouldn't you want to operate on the gcc in the main
   tree, and leave alone the tools-dir gcc, which you could then reserve
   for bailing yourself out? [I understand that the tools/ toolchain is
   only the bootstrap, and that gcc &c. are still ultimately installed
   into the ordinary place. Correct me if I'm confused.]


i've recently been trying to get the sparc64 compiler to have decent
built in 32 bit support.  part of that requires that i rebuild part
of the compiler if i need to...  often this is just the gcc/g++
front ends.  in the new world order, the compiler used to build the
system is the `tools' one, so i need to update it.


this isn't a normal thing, but when you're doing it, it's *really*
useful....  it's a risk i'm willing to (optionally) take. :-)


.mrg.