[Ecls-list] RANLIB, AR, build paths when cross-compiling

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

Hi Juanjo,

Attached is a patch I had needed (and that has been sitting on my hard-drive
for a while now.)  It addresses some pesky issues related to
cross-compiling ECL. 

1. ECL hard-codes the name of the program `ranlib'.  That should not be.
   Rather, like the compiler,the name should be detected at
   configuration time.  The patch adds a special variable *RANLIB* for
   just that.  Note that the detection at configuration time is
   important because during cross compilation, the name of the program
   may be prefixed by the host triplet, e.g. i686-pc-mingw32-ranlib.
   This is what the Autoconf AC_PROG_RANLIB macro is for.

2. Similarly, ECL hard-codes the name of the `ar' program.  That is no good.
   The patch introduces a special variable *AR* for that purpose.
   `ar' is looked for at configuration time as a tool, hence AC_CHECK_TOOL.

3. Build path.
   When ECL generates C codes, it uses SI::COERCE-TO-FILENAME to
   construct an absolute path to the variously generated external files.
   That function generates host native paths.  That is OK for a native
   build.  But, it is not OK for a cross build.  For example, if you are
   using Wine on Unix/Linux to cross compile ECL and use the default
   drive mapping, the build system's filesystem / is mapped to the Z:/
   drive; so, you will get absolute paths starting with Z:, that is no
   good for tools working on the build system.  Rather, ECL needs to
   generate paths that are grok-able by the build system and its tool.
   The proposed patch introduces BRIEF-NAMESTRING which is
   ENOUGH-NAMESTRING around SI::COERCE-TO-FILENAME to get rid of the 
   thr drive letter where unnecessary.


There are other issues related to cross-compiling ECL, but they are
orthogonal to this.


-- Gaby


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