[License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] Re: Discussion: AGPL and Open Source Definition conflict

[Florian Weimer]

* Cem F. Karan:

> This is actually starting to sound like an interesting/good idea.  For
> GPL compliance, you can't get much better than having the source
> artifacts stored with the binary itself.

It's not always possible to meet license notification requirements
this way, unfortunately.

> So, the question is, what is the easiest way to test storing all
> artifacts within a binary?

objcopy or the .incbin directive in GAS.  The compiler can also just
omit the source code into a special section (no .incbin needed).

A useful implementation for C and C++ looks rather involved due to the
preprocessor.  Since header files are not explicitly compiled (unlike
say Ada specs), they need to be included somewhere, and at the same
time, you need to avoid storing duplicates, especially with C++.
Languages without preprocessors usually do not have this problem
(although there can be cases where sources which do not produce object
code do not have to be compiled explicitly, either).