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Re: flag day for Solaris portions of config.{guess,sub}
Paul Eggert writes:
> Rainer Orth <ro@TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE> writes:
>
> > A continued burden which removes clarity from those scripts,
>
> Using -sunos5* would not remove clarity from scripts, as it's just as
> clear as -solaris2*. And it would not be a continued burden, as it's
My comment was referring to the -solaris2.x/-solaris[789]/-solaris<n>
variant, where we are left without a catch-all pattern for Solaris 2.
-sunos5* is certainly ok in this respect, but also a massive change over
dozens or hundreds of packages for no real gain.
> It is a tradeoff between maintainer convenience and newbie convenience.
> The easiest thing for maintainers is to do nothing, and continue to
> confuse novices in this minor way. (After all, we've invented our own
> nonstandard jargon that works for us, and if it confuses novices then
> that's their problem. :-)
Exactly: apart from the minor confusion (which is already there by the
SunOS 5 vs. Solaris 2 vs. Solaris 7/8/9/10 mess), no harm is done by
sticking to the established convention of using solaris2* instead of
sunos5*. The bad choice to use solaris2* instead of sunos5* (where Sun had
already created lots of confusion by re-branding SunOS 4.1.1B to Solaris
1.0) as config.guess output had been made early in the history of Solaris 2,
and this whole discussion clearly suggest that we stick with that
(admittedly bad) choice since compatibility is considerably more important
than following marketing inventions.
Rainer