Need help building GDC on 64-bit Debian

[H. S. Teoh]

Hi all,

I spent almost the whole day trying to get GDC to build on my 64-bit
Debian system, only to fail miserably. Are there any steps /
configurations that are known to work??

Here's what I figured out so far: Debian's multiarch directory structure
breaks the pristine gcc sources (due to stuff being moved to
/usr/include/$arch/* from /usr/include/*, ditto for /usr/lib). To remedy
this, I installed Debian's gcc sources (apt-get source gcc-4.7) and ran:

	debian/rules clean
	debian/rules patch

which applies a whole bunch of Debian patches that, presumably, fix the
gcc sources to be able to deal with multiarch directory structure.

So after running that, I cd to the GDC git sources and run update-gcc.sh
to link the D stuff into the source tree, then I ran configure and make.
This got a lot farther than when I was building directly from the
upstream GCC sources (due to the multiarch issue), but it still failed
miserably in various places, depending on which configure options I
tried. I still get:

	configure: error: Link tests are not allowed after GCC_NO_EXECUTABLES.

I did manage to get gcc itself to build, by using Debian's build script
(dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot), but I just can't figure out how exactly
the script is configuring the build -- it's a gigantic labyrinth of
scripts calling each other.

So anyway, for starters, I'd like to be able to at least get GDC to
build externally; eventually I'd like to figure out how to make it build
as a Debian package and maybe even upload it -- the current gdc in the
Debian archive is very old. Any help along those lines would be greatly
appreciated. :)


T

-- 
Doubtless it is a good thing to have an open mind, but a truly open mind should be open at both ends, like the food-pipe, with the capacity for excretion as well as absorption. -- Northrop Frye