Updating top-level autoconf to 2.59

[Michael Eager]

John Cowan wrote:
> Michael Eager scripsit:
> 
>> I would much prefer explicitly specifying that the build is cross or
>> native.  I want to specify --cross or --native (or the equivalent).
>> I'd be happy to discard backward compatibility.
> 
> The trouble is that you can't be sure that there aren't really
> three different machine architectures -- you might be building a compiler
> on a Linux box to run on a Solaris system to generate code for an ARM,
> for example.  Is building a compiler on a Linux box to run on Solaris
> to generate code for the same Linux box a cross-compiler or not?
> How about building a compiler on Solaris to run on Linux for Linux?
> And so on.

I know the machines which I am building on and the target I am
building for.  No guessing.  No ambiguity.  I know that Solaris
is not Linux.  I can ALWAYS be sure that I am building on three
different architectures when I explicitly specify host, build,
and target.

I don't need autoconf to attempt to guess what I mean with I say
--build=i686-linux-gnu, --target=i686-solaris, --cross.

> But I agree that it shouldn't matter whether a build, host, or target
> switch is specified or defaulted; what should matter is the equality
> or inequality of the value of those switches.

What others have said is that at times what appears to be a native
build, since the switch values are the same, is actually a a cross-compile.

I think that you miss the point.  It's the guessing that is
problematic.

-- 
Michael Eager	 eager@eagercon.com
1960 Park Blvd., Palo Alto, CA 94306  650-325-8077