Maybe it would be an idea to create a very simple LinuxBIOS toolchain system where from a small SVN download, one can have a clean build environment using a pseudo cross-compile environment with a clean compiler per the 'latest' LinuxBIOS suggestion.
Building a cross-compilation toolchain on a fast machine takes about 10 minutes, while building LinuxBIOS should take about 2 seconds.
Also, you might *want* to use a "non-default" toolchain.
I personally use either Buildroot or another really interesting environment called openwrt (which has a really neat build environment aimed at the low-cost broadcom chip-based router environment), but essentially with these environments, one does an SVN checkout which downloads a series of scripts and makefiles, and from that a make creates a completely new toolchain from the specified known sources.
You might want to check out Dan Kegel's excellent "crosstool".
The really great thing about this is that one then has a KNOWN toolchain and all compiles are done with this KNOWN toolchain. Removes a whole lot of crap from the entire build environment, and, it generally works on ANY Linux platform - sure, there are some issues on OSX etc, but it does sure make a clean Linux build environment.
I regularly build the Linux kernel on OSX -- all it takes are some fixes to Linux itself, none toolchain related -- and certainly no fixes to the toolchain itself.
This may be a resolution to the screwed toolchains supplied in certain distros.
That much is true, but it's a really heavy-handed solution.
An option might be to include a script to build (and install) a toolchain as an optional preparation step for building LB.
I personally stopped using ANY flavour of redhat about 5 years ago when they released 7.1 with totally screwed beta compilers, which just broke everything.
"2.96". Yeah I still feel the pain.
ever tried to tell RH that they introduced a bug in the compiler toolchain??? I think it would probably have fallen on deaf ears.
You should have tried though.
Segher