From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 26762 invoked by alias); 1 Dec 2003 21:29:34 -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 26749 invoked from network); 1 Dec 2003 21:29:33 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.codesourcery.com) (65.73.237.138) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 1 Dec 2003 21:29:33 -0000 Received: (qmail 26821 invoked from network); 1 Dec 2003 21:24:28 -0000 Received: from taltos.codesourcery.com (zack@66.92.218.83) by mail.codesourcery.com with DES-CBC3-SHA encrypted SMTP; 1 Dec 2003 21:24:28 -0000 Received: by taltos.codesourcery.com (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Mon, 1 Dec 2003 13:29:29 -0800 From: "Zack Weinberg" To: Paul Eggert Cc: Ben Elliston , gcc@gcc.gnu.org, binutils@sources.redhat.com, gdb@sources.redhat.com, rms@gnu.org 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> Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 22:09:00 -0000 In-Reply-To: <87brqsw9d9.fsf@penguin.cs.ucla.edu> (Paul Eggert's message of "01 Dec 2003 12:50:26 -0800") Message-ID: <871xroqlaf.fsf@egil.codesourcery.com> User-Agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) Emacs/21.3 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-SW-Source: 2003-12/txt/msg00104.txt.bz2 Paul Eggert writes: > "Zack Weinberg" writes: > >> Once a pattern of canonical names has been chosen for a given family >> of operating systems, that pattern must not ever change. > > That's still too strong. Changing canonical names is not something > one wants to do lightly of course, but it's not unprecedented. We > have changed the output of config.guess in the past, notably for > GNU/Linux. I would argue that every last one of those changes was a mistake, but a mistake that cannot now be rectified. > That being said, I'm sympathetic to the design principle you're > advocating. Ironically, this whole problem occurred because we didn't > follow that principle: we changed the pattern of canonical names for > part of the SunOS family of operating systems from -sunos* to > -solaris*. Again, this was a mistake, which *cannot now be rectified*. Changing it again would be *worse* than the original change was - the original change happened when solaris2 was still a new thing, not widely used, and (critically) CPU-sun-solaris2.x / CPU-sun-sunos5.x patterns did not appear in a large number of autoconf scripts. My point is really that you and others advocating the change seem to underestimate the disruption involved by orders of magnitude. I think it's roughly comparable to the disruption involved in the switch from autoconf 2.13 to autoconf 2.5x -- every last configure script on the planet is going to have to be audited for problems, and possibly modified. And configure scripts aren't the only things that use config.guess/ config.sub. Consider FTP archives and automatic programs that retrieve files from those archives. Consider system administrators using cfengine to manage large heterogeneous networks. Consider old backup tapes labelled and formatted according to canonical system name. Is smoothing out a minor irregularity of naming convention really worth all this disruption? zw