Partial autoconf transition thoughts

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jun 11, 2003, "Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl> wrote:

>  It's good we do that, but it's bad autoconf does not.  Any reasonable
> justification?

It just isn't there.  I don't remember whether Nathanael tried to
contribute his macros to autoconf.  I do agree they'd make sense.

>  Well, see how AM_INSTALL_LIBBFD is defined. ;-)

Presumably you're configuring with --enable-shared
--enable-install-libbfd.  I'd never done that :-)

Anyway, $(exec_prefix)/$(host_alias) is entirely pointless.
$(exec_prefix) is already supposed to be host-specific.

>  Why is that so?  I am looking at what autoconf does right now and I can
> see that $ac_cv_host_alias is set to $ac_cv_build_alias if $host_alias is
> empty and $ac_cv_target_alias is set to ac_cv_host_alias if $target_alias
> is empty.

Which autoconf are you looking at?

> I hope not for the lone reason of differing between
> implied and user-specified values

This was the reason for the behavior change, yes.

>  That's a reasonable approach for now, but why can't autoconf be fixed
> ultimately? 

I can't think of any reason for that.  But we're trying to move to
autoconf 2.57, not some hacked version thereof, so we have to cope
with its limitations for now.

>  Indeed, but I would prefer to see it done in autoconf so that it need not
> be repeated locally elsewhere.

It feels like you're volunteering to convert Nathanael's macros into
autoconf, do I read it right? :-D :-D

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                 aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist                Professional serial bug killer