From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 30018 invoked by alias); 4 Dec 2003 14:16:33 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org Received: (qmail 29951 invoked from network); 4 Dec 2003 14:16:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO localhost.redhat.com) (207.219.125.105) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 4 Dec 2003 14:16:31 -0000 Received: from gnu.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by localhost.redhat.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 490822B8F; Thu, 4 Dec 2003 09:16:26 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3FCF41BA.8090807@gnu.org> Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2003 14:22:00 -0000 From: Andrew Cagney User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; NetBSD macppc; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030820 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: rms@gnu.org Cc: Zack Weinberg , eggert@CS.UCLA.EDU, bje@wasabisystems.com, gcc@gcc.gnu.org, binutils@sources.redhat.com, gdb@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: flag day for Solaris portions of config.{guess,sub} References: <8765hf4c8z.fsf@wasabisystems.com> <87wu9mt79r.fsf@egil.codesourcery.com> <871xrs5b9j.fsf@penguin.cs.ucla.edu> <87znegqb31.fsf@codesourcery.com> <87brqsw9d9.fsf@penguin.cs.ucla.edu> <871xroqlaf.fsf@egil.codesourcery.com> <87n0aaj4cl.fsf@penguin.cs.ucla.edu> <87wu9esxu6.fsf@egil.codesourcery.com> <87ad69rf42.fsf@egil.codesourcery.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SW-Source: 2003-12/txt/msg00324.txt.bz2 > > 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