Re: [PATCH 1/1] powerpc: Detect broken or mismatched toolchains

[Sam Bobroff <sam.bobroff@au1.ibm.com>]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 08:05:01PM -0600, Scott Wood wrote:
> On Mon, 2016-02-22 at 16:13 +1100, Sam Bobroff wrote:
> > It can currently be difficult to diagnose a build that fails due to
> > the compiler, linker or other parts of the toolchain being unable to
> > build binaries of the type required by the kernel config. For example
> > using a little endian toolchain to build a big endian kernel may
> > produce:
> > 
> > as: unrecognized option '-maltivec'
> > 
> > This patch adds a basic compile test and error message to
> > arch/powerpc/Makefile so that the above error becomes:
> > 
> > *** Sorry, your toolchain seems to be broken or incorrect. ***
> > Make sure it supports your kernel configuration (ppc64).
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Sam Bobroff <sam.bobroff@au1.ibm.com>
> > ---
> 
> How is this more useful than getting to actually see the way in which the
> toolchain (or the CFLAGS) is broken?

My reasoning was that it would be better because it happens at the start of the
build, rather than (possibly) a long way into it, and it indicates that the
problem is the toolchain setup (or config) itself rather than the file it's
trying to compile or link.

But I agree completely with what you're saying. I'll try re-working it in a way
that shows the command that fails and it's output.

Cheers,
Sam.