[LLVMdev] LLVM_LIB_SEARCH_PATH

[Chris Lattner]

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004, Reid Spencer wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I need to solicit your opinion about something.
>
> I'm toying with the idea of getting rid of LLVM_LIB_SEARCH_PATH. Right
> now the linkers will use this environment variable if it specifies a
> single directory. It will look in that directory to find libraries when
> things like -lc or -lcrtend are specified on the command line. Right
> now, the only known place this is useful to set to is the CFE's
> install/bytecode-libs directory. However, the configure script can make
> that path available to us already because LLVM requires configuring with
> --with-llvmgccdir=...

Actually, LLVM does *not* require the C frontend, but the only tools that 
use the environment variable are those that are only used by the CFE.

> So, it is my understanding that current usage of
> LLVM_LIB_SEARCH_PATH is redundant with already available information
> from the configure script.
>
> Does anyone put anything *other* than CFE/install/bytecode-libs in their
> LLVM_LIB_SEARCH_PATH? Does anyone expect it to actually be a colon
> separated list of path names to be searched (its not interpreted that
> way currently)?
>
> I see two options:
>
> 1. Get rid of LLVM_LIB_SEARCH_PATH and just have the linker "know"
>   about the bytecode-libs directory if --with-llvmgccdir was
>   specified to configure.
>
> 2. Fully support LLVM_LIB_SEARCH_PATH as a colon separated path list
>   to search for bytecode archives and files. In this case their would
>   be no need to specify the bytecode-libs directory, it would be
>   included already.

I definitely prefer #1.  The only concern I have with it is that this 
makes it impossible to move the llvmgcc install directory once it is built 
(tools would not look in the correct directories).

-Chris

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