Re: flag day for Solaris portions of config.{guess,sub}

[Phil Edwards <phil@codesourcery.com>]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 10:14:47PM +0100, Rainer Orth wrote:
> Eric Botcazou writes:
> 
> > What's the point in exchanging a minor barrier for a major maintainance 
> > problem?
> 
> Exactly: all messages Paul came up with were from users wondering about the
> discrepancy between their knowledge of the O/S version and the config.guess
> output.  The same kind of confusion comes up regularly between SunOS 5.x
> and Solaris 2.x/Solaris x, and is resolved as soon as it is explained
> (usually by pointing people at the Solaris 2 FAQ).

As a longtime user and administrator of Solaris boxes, I strongly agree.
The weirdness is a complete marketing tactic with little technical merit,
and is easily understood by pointing new users at Casper Dik's Solaris 2 FAQ.

This change is unneeded, will create confusion, and gets us no benefit in
exchange for even more work.  Increasing the maintanence hassle for Free
Software authors is hardly a solution to new user's confusion.

-- 
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
    - Brian W. Kernighan