Compilers and universal flag

[Vincent Habchi]

Folks,

I am not aware this subject has been discussed before; if it has, I apologize for pointing out twice the same issue.

It seems to me Macports doesn’t deal the right way with universal and compilers. AFAIK, the +universal flag is needed (at least for GCC4.x) in order for the compiler to be able to generate universal images (m32/m64). Side effect is that the compiler itself is built as a universal binary, which may or – most of the time – may not be desired. There are few cases where a universal compiler is needed; conversely, universal capable compiler can often be useful.

Therefore, I was about to suggest that we introduce a special universal option (e.g. universal-binary) to tell MacPorts we want the compiler be built universal, as opposed to the classical +universal option that would tell please build me a compiler that is able to generate universal binaries. This way, the dependency chain would not be broken (+universal binary would indeed need a +universal compiler), but the user would have an additional degree of freedom when building his/her compiler.

Opinion?

Vincent