Why is make utils so complicated?

[Rob Landley]

The ldd build is essientially:
  gcc -I ldso/include utils/ldd.c

The ldconfig build adds two #defines from the command line:
  -DUCLIBC_RUNTIME_PREFIX=\"$(RUNTIME_PREFIX)\"
  -DUCLIBC_LDSO=$(UCLIBC_LDSO)

To build readelf with the host toolchain, you do:
  ln -s ../include/elf.h utils/elf.h
  gcc -I utils ldso/include utils/readelf.c

This is not brain surgery.  Why on earth does this require a makefile that's so 
complicated it prevents you from feeding --static in via CFLAGS, uses a 
special case .config option for whether you want to statically link ldconfig, 
but doesn't provide the _option_ to statically link ldd?

Rob
-- 
Latency is more important than throughput. It's that simple. - Linus Torvalds