From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 17305 invoked by alias); 6 Dec 2003 11:31:01 -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 17280 invoked from network); 6 Dec 2003 11:30:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.esperi.org.uk) (194.247.41.52) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 6 Dec 2003 11:30:59 -0000 Received: from esperi.org.uk (1000@amaterasu.srvr.nix [192.168.14.14]) by mail.esperi.org.uk (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id hB6BUo79005138; Sat, 6 Dec 2003 11:30:50 GMT Received: (from nix@localhost) by esperi.org.uk (8.12.10/8.12.10/Submit) id hB6BST4W010905; Sat, 6 Dec 2003 11:28:29 GMT To: Joe Buck Cc: Zack Weinberg , rms@gnu.org, =?iso-8859-1?q?Branko_=C8ibej?= , 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: <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> <3FCEE9B1.3050703@xbc.nu> <87y8trm9ra.fsf@egil.codesourcery.com> <20031205104251.A2650@synopsys.com> From: Nix X-Emacs: resistance is futile; you will be assimilated and byte-compiled. Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 12:11:00 -0000 In-Reply-To: <20031205104251.A2650@synopsys.com> (Joe Buck's message of "Fri, 5 Dec 2003 18:44:29 +0000 (UTC)") Message-ID: <87oeumjici.fsf@amaterasu.srvr.nix> User-Agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) XEmacs/21.4 (Reasonable Discussion, linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-SW-Source: 2003-12/txt/msg00416.txt.bz2 On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Joe Buck uttered the following: > On Fri, Dec 05, 2003 at 09:53:29AM -0800, Zack Weinberg wrote: >> Richard Stallman writes: >> >> > >> > Are you saying that config.guess is widely used outside of configure >> > scripts? >> >> Yes. > > config.guess is used in a number of places to generate the canonical name > for the type of system that the user is running on. > > As an example of such use, consider GCC's test_summary script. Have another random example: The repository of (compiled) free software I habitually maintain at every workplace I've ever been in so far has paths for all binaries which contain the canonical name of the system they run on. Because these paths are compiled into a number of those binaries, they can't change safely without fairly large-scale recompilation. (Thankfully, the filesystem supports symlinks, so I can work around this: but it'll still be confusing for users who look inside the appropriate directory and wonder why sparc-sun-solaris2.8 is a symlink to sparc-sun-sunos5.8... pretty much the same `minor barrier' as was originally referred to.) > That said, for many uses of the output of config.guess, a change would not > cause significant harm. Agreed. > This is especially true for source distributions > that contain their own copy of config.guess: the distribution will generally > be consistent with the copy of config.guess that it contains. It's not as though this change will be terrifically damaging, as long as people replacing config.guess check that it still works as expected on Solaris boxes... ... but that check may be unlikely to happen: it's not as though config.guess triplets frequently change, or are *expected* to change. -- `I have some desires that would probably consume the entire lifetime power output of one G-type star.' --- Mark Atwood