The recent thread:
"Error building Sage 4.4.3 under vanilla Debian lenny amd64: Error while
installing flint"
http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/browse_thread/thread/54531b50412b9882/2f45257c5e56ab00?lnk=gst&q=Error+building+Sage+4.4.3+under+vanilla+Debian+lenny+amd64%3A+Error+while+installing+flint#2f45257c5e56ab00
is an example of where someone had a broken installation of Debian (different
versions of gcc and g++), so got an error from the 'prereq' script, which I
altered some time ago to detect different versions and exit.
The poster then went on to try to get CC and/or CXX in order that he got the
same (older) versions of both.
Such a plan will never work in Sage, as numerous bits of code make direct calls
to "gcc" or "g++" and ignore the environment variables. So any attempt to do
this results on C compiler being used to build one bit of Sage, and another to
build another bit of Sage. That seems a recipe for disaster.
Hence I'd propose that any attempt to set CC, CXX, FC, or F77 caused the build
to exit with a warning. Then allow an environment variable like
SAGE_ALLOW_SETTING_OF_COMPILERS
(better name?)
that will allow someone to do this, if they really want to.
Not letting people set CC or similar seems a bit dumb, as it is very useful for
some sort of debugging, or porting to Sun Studio. But it is pretty dangerous for
a typical user to do, as it will never work as they would expect.
The same is true really of CP, CHMOD and several other variables. They work in
some parts of Sage, and not in others.
Dave
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