Thus spake Ty Sarna
> In article <m12O48x-000AV4C@druid.net>,
> D'Arcy J.M. Cain <tech-pkg@netbsd.org> wrote:
> > > If in fact the working system was using 1.1 of files/Setup.in, I'll go
> > > ahead and fix files/Setup.in to use "-R..." instead of "-Wl,-R...."
> > 
> > But then other system will break.  Can we wait until we see exactly what
> > the difference is before we change it?
> 
> No, it shouldn't break. I think cc has accepted -R since 1.4 at least.
> It may break for 1.3.x, but I don't know how much of pkgsrc works for
> them presently anyway. I think I've been just using -R in my other
> packages, so there is precedent.

I guess you mean -Wl and yes, I tested that on an a.out system and it did
compile.  Someone pointed out to me that mysql has the same problem so I
suppose we better do something.  I have sent the following message to
comp.lang.python to see if anyone knows why they did it the way they did.

------------------------- Message to comp.lang.python --------------------
I have a question about the following code in Python's configure script.
  
    case $ac_sys_system/$ac_sys_release in
...
    NetBSD*)
        if [ "`$CC -dM -E - </dev/null | grep __ELF__`" != "" ]
        then
            LDSHARED="cc -shared"          
        else
            LDSHARED="ld -Bshareable"
        fi;;
 
Can someone tell me why the decision was made to use cc on ELF systems
and ld on a.out?  I checked and my a.out system accepts cc -shared just
fine.  The reason for asking is that our package building system now
has to do the same test on every Python package to decide whether to
add -Wl, in front of the ld flags if there are additional libraries
to link in.  It would be a lot cleaner if we didn't have to add this
test in on every package.
  
Anyway, I am thinking of patching the configure script in our package
system so that the NetBSD* simply sets LDSHARED to "cc -shared" in every
case.  Anyone see a downside to that?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@{druid|vex}.net>   |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.