flag day for Solaris portions of config.{guess,sub}
Andrew Cagney
cagney@gnu.org
Thu Dec 4 14:16:00 GMT 2003
> > Don't we know that most programs that use Autoconf don't actually look
> > at the configuration name at all?
>
> Paul Eggert already presented evidence that roughly 10% of a sample of
> configure.in scripts not only look at the configuration name, but
> match it against patterns containing the string "solaris" or "sunos".
> To my mind that is enough to rule out the proposed change as too costly.
>
> I'm surprised it is so many. As someone pointed out, the real extent of
> the problem depends on how many of them check the version number as well
> as the name. It should be pretty easy to measure that too.
>
> And, for the third time, Autoconf is not the only user of
> config.guess/config.sub.
>
> The point is that most programs nowadays use Autoconf, so other uses are
> few.
Just FYI, there's something of a gap between the theory and the
[unfortunate] reality here. To quote GDB's internals doco:
``GDB's host configuration support normally happens via Autoconf. New
host-specific definitions should not be needed. Older hosts GDB still
use the host-specific definitions and files listed below, but these
mostly exist for historical reasons, and will eventually disappear.''
Two observations:
- This upstream change would serve as a useful trigger for making a few
more of those configurations "disappear".
- There's only marginal return in trying to 100% covert programs such as
GDB to autoconf (not stopping anyone from trying mind :-). Far easier
to let the old systems bit rot and die - trimming them as dead wood in a
year or so.
Andrew
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