Re: [PATCH 6/7] kbuild: make source and include paths absolute

[Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>]

On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 11:17:07AM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Fri, 23 May 2008 20:18:40 +0300
> Adrian Bunk <bunk@kernel.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 08:17:24PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > > On Mon, 19 May 2008 10:44:56 +0200 Peter Oberparleiter <peter.oberparleiter@de.ibm.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > From: Peter Oberparleiter <peter.oberparleiter@de.ibm.com>
> > > > 
> > > > Change all source and include paths to absolute form when
> > > > CONFIG_GCOV_PROFILE is enabled.
> > > > 
> > > > Example:
> > > > 
> > > >   gcc -Idir1 -c a.c -o a.o
> > > > 
> > > > will become
> > > > 
> > > >   gcc -I/path/to/dir1 -c /path/to/a.c -o a.o
> > > > 
> > > > Required by the gcov profiling infrastructure: when compiling with
> > > > option -fprofile-arcs, gcc stores file names inside object files.
> > > > Relative paths prevent the gcov tool from finding corresponding source
> > > > files.
> > > 
> > > I don't like this.  It converts the compiler error messages from
> > > relative paths to absolute paths which is rather obnoxious when
> > > all kernel developent is (or should be) base-directory-agnostic.
> > 
> > The compiler error messages are already absolute paths when using O=
> > (see e.g. all error messages sent by me in recent years).
> > 
> 
> Well I guess that's understandable with O=.
> 
> But I find it rather nasty.  (I guess it'd be less nasty if I were to
> get off my butt and work out how to teach rxvt that "/" is a word
> separator).
> 
> What do others think?

That the gcov tool has a bug if it insist on using absolute paths.
And thus we should fix gcov and not workaround it in the kernel.

	Sam