Re: Need response file support

From: Patrick Frants (gclbb-jamboost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-10-22 05:05:02

David Abrahams <dave_at_[hidden]> wrote in
news:uelaj7qdy.fsf_at_[hidden]: 

> Patrick Frants <gclbb-jamboost_at_[hidden]> writes:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I am in need of response file support in our link rule. I found
>> several ways to do it on the jam mailing list, but none seems to work
>> with boost under Linux. 
>> 
>> Can someone show a modified Link rule for the gcc toolset that should
>> work under Linux? 
> 
> The problem is that gcc doesn't support response files. I don't think
> there's much you can do here.

That's right. Somehow I thought I had read it somewhere.

> 
> Well, you could think about putting something like 
> 
> `cat $(target).CMD` 
> 
> in the g++ command-line. But this is a hack that I wouldn't want to
> try. What are you trying to accomplish? Linux doesn't have a
> command-line length limitation, which is the reason you normally need
> response files under Windows.

It does have a limitation: MAX_ARG_PAGES(32 by default) * 4096 = 128k for 
the arguments of a process. I could not believe my ears when I heard about 
it... Almost makes me consider contributing a patch to Linux, but 
considering the fact that it is not already there it is probably not that 
easy... So the easy way out is to recompile the kernel.

We are reluctant to use libraries because then we need to add an 
initialization function to every .cpp to initialize all c++ static 
objects... Also it increases total build time.

Patrick