[Pkg-kde-extras] Bug#435252: icecc provides no way to report ICECC_VERSION's underlying gcc version

[Edward Welbourne]

Package: icecc
Version: 0.8.0-1
Severity: wishlist

If I invoke icecc --version
it tells me (very sensibly) the version of icecc I'm using.
If I invoke icecc -- --version
I get a report of my primary native gcc's version, regardless of the
value of ICECC_VERSION, along with an error message about the --

I maintain internal make files, which need to adapt the flags passed down to
gcc, depending on gcc's version (e.g. 2.95 doesn't support some of the handier
-M variants, gcc 3 but < 3.3 lacks -Wstrict-aliasing, etc.).  If a user of the
make files has set ICECC_VERSION, presumably to use some version of gcc other
than their default installed /usr/bin/gcc, I need the make files to detect which
version they're really talking to.

When gcc is invoked directly, I can call gcc --version | head -n 1 | sed with
suitable parameters and get the version in a make variable to test with
pattern-matching; with different sed parameters, I can learn a good deal about
cross-compilers, too.  However, with icecc, this is not an option; those doing
cross-compilation, or test-compilation with an old compiler, can't distribute
their compilation with icecc without some extra complications.

I've got tar-balls built using the instructions on
  http://en.opensuse.org/Icecream
and have verified that the g++ and gcc they contain are, indeed, from the
various versions installed on my lenny machine.  None the less, no matter
which one I set ICECC_VERSION to, icecc -- --version or icecc -v, e.g.
  ICECC_VERSION=/usr/opt/icecc/gcc-2.95.4+binutils-2.17.tar.gz icecc -v
always get their errors from 4.1.3 (current primary version).  This is not the
version used when I do real compilation with this environment variable set, so
the output is useless.  It would be better if icecc failed, reporting that it
can't support the operation, rather than "supporting" it by invoking the wrong
compiler.

My prefered fix would be the addition of a --gcc-version recognised by icecc,
resolved by invoking the underlying gcc's --version.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.21-2-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.ISO-8859-15, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.ISO-8859-15 (charmap=ISO-8859-15)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages icecc depends on:
ii  adduser                 3.104            add and remove users and groups
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]   1.5.13           Debian configuration management sy
ii  libc6                   2.6-2            GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libgcc1                 1:4.2-20070712-1 GCC support library
ii  libstdc++6              4.2-20070712-1   The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  lsb-base                3.1-23.1         Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip

icecc recommends no packages.

-- debconf information:
* icecc/daemon: true
* icecc/scheduler: false