Important: TestCompile and c89 argument order

[Martin Kraemer <ma...@mch.sni.de>]

Hi,

After a couple of days of testing, I found the first difficulties with
this change in helpers/TestCompile which I committed recently as part
of the IBM OS/390 patch:
    diff -p -u -r1.34 -r1.35
    --- apache-1.3/src/helpers/TestCompile  1999/07/21 14:32:55     1.34
    +++ /home/cvs/apache-1.3/src/helpers/TestCompile        1999/12/09 17:19:42     1.35
    @@ -200,10 +201,10 @@ INCLUDES=\$(INCLUDES1) \$(EXTRA_INCLUDES
     LDFLAGS=\$(LDFLAGS1) \$(EXTRA_LDFLAGS)

     dummy:
    -       cd ..; \$(CC) \$(CFLAGS) \$(INCLUDES) \$(LDFLAGS) helpers/dummy.c -o helpers/dummy $TLIB \$(LIBS)
    +       cd ..; \$(CC) \$(CFLAGS) \$(INCLUDES) \$(LDFLAGS) -o helpers/dummy $TLIB \$(LIBS) helpers/dummy.c

     testfunc:
    -       cd ..; \$(CC) \$(CFLAGS) \$(INCLUDES) \$(LDFLAGS) helpers/testfunc.c -o helpers/testfunc $TLIB \$(LIBS)
    +       cd ..; \$(CC) \$(CFLAGS) \$(INCLUDES) \$(LDFLAGS) -o helpers/testfunc $TLIB \$(LIBS) helpers/testfunc.c
     EOF

As you can see, the former argument order

  c89 helpers/testfunc.c -o helpers/testfunc $TLIB \$(LIBS)

was changed to

  c89 -o helpers/testfunc $TLIB \$(LIBS) helpers/testfunc.c

While I don't have problems with the "-o outname" appearing *before*
the input source file, my compiler DOES care about the library names
(-L/lib -lblah) appearing before, not after, the source name. My
compiler is a c89 (but made by Siemens, not by IBM), and it insists on
treating its source, object and library arguments left-to-right, which
makes sense IMHO.

I don't know if Unix98 requires that a c89 handle $(LIBS) before the
sources, but at least I know that few people use c89 (most use cc, and
cc is NOT required to accept this).

So IMO....

a)  this change should be reverted BEFORE 1.3.10 (lest we intend to
    fail on cc-only machines)
    and
b)  IBMers should write a wrapper around their c89 to reorder the
    arguments (I have written one for our compiler as well ;-)

What do you think?

    Martin
-- 
<Ma...@MchP.Siemens.De>             |     Fujitsu Siemens
Fon: +49-89-636-46021, FAX: +49-89-636-41143 | 81730  Munich,  Germany