@stdweird: please review?

@boegel: Hmm... I'm still getting a parse error when trying to use the archived easyconfig for building (it says line 43, but it seems to be off by one, i.e., still in the gcc_version).

I believe the quoting used by this PR is incorrect:

 'gcc_version': '"Using built-in specs.; COLLECT_GCC=gcc; COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.7/lto-wrapper; Target: x86_64-linux-gnu; Configured with: ../src/configure -v --with-pkgversion='Debian 4.7.2-5' --with-bugurl=file:///usr/share/doc/gcc-4.7/README.Bugs --enable-languages=c,c++,go,fortran,objc,obj-c++ --prefix=/usr --program-suffix=-4.7 --enable-shared --enable-linker-build-id --with-system-zlib --libexecdir=/usr/lib --without-included-gettext --enable-threads=posix --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.7 --libdir=/usr/lib --enable-nls --with-sysroot=/ --enable-clocale=gnu --enable-libstdcxx-debug --enable-libstdcxx-time=yes --enable-gnu-unique-object --enable-plugin --enable-objc-gc --with-arch-32=i586 --with-tune=generic --enable-checking=release --build=x86_64-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-linux-gnu --target=x86_64-linux-gnu; Thread model: posix; gcc version 4.7.2 (Debian 4.7.2-5) ; "',

But you know Python much better than I do...

@geimer: hmm, damn... Seems like the quote_str function isn't doing what it should be doing... Weird.

@geimer: the issues indeed was't fixed properly, as also indicated by Jenkins (which is also running Debian), see https://jenkins1.ugent.be/job/easybuild-framework-pr-builder/917/console

Last commit should now fix the problem properly (and also involves some code cleanup, hooray!)... Please check again?

@geimer: make that the last two commits, a typo slipped in...

@boegel: Not sure whether it will now work for all possible corner cases, but it works like a charm for my test case :-) Thanks!

I've split off the fixes w.r.t. --repositorypath and --prefix in #1031, as requested by @stdweird.

@boegel ok to me

Going in, thanks for the review @wpoely86 & @stdweird, and @geimer for verifying the fix.