From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 13326 invoked by alias); 29 Nov 2003 00:25:19 -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 13302 invoked from network); 29 Nov 2003 00:25:18 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.codesourcery.com) (65.73.237.138) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 29 Nov 2003 00:25:18 -0000 Received: (qmail 30667 invoked from network); 29 Nov 2003 00:20:34 -0000 Received: from dhcp121.icir.org (HELO taltos.codesourcery.com) (zack@192.150.187.121) by mail.codesourcery.com with DES-CBC3-SHA encrypted SMTP; 29 Nov 2003 00:20:34 -0000 Received: by taltos.codesourcery.com (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Fri, 28 Nov 2003 16:20:50 -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> Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 02:24:00 -0000 In-Reply-To: <871xrs5b9j.fsf@penguin.cs.ucla.edu> (Paul Eggert's message of "28 Nov 2003 15:22:32 -0800") Message-ID: <87znegqb31.fsf@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: 2003-11/txt/msg01472.txt.bz2 Paul Eggert writes: > "Zack Weinberg" writes: > >> THE OUTPUT OF CONFIG.GUESS MUST NOT EVER CHANGE. >> EVEN IF IT IS WRONG. > > It isn't reasonable to insist on this as an absolute policy. If this > policy were strictly adhered to, most of the changes to config.guess > would be disallowed, as config.guess typically outputs something wrong > on unusual hosts. Possibly I should have phrased it differently. Referring only to config.guess gives a misleading impression. This isn't about bugs in config.guess/config.sub (which I limit to "conflates two different systems" and "prints something that doesn't have the form of a canonical system name"). This is about canonical system names, which must be stable even if the stable name isn't ideal. Once a canonical name has been chosen for a given operating system, that canonical name must not ever change. Once a pattern of canonical names has been chosen for a given family of operating systems, that pattern must not ever change. Do otherwise and you ruin the utility of canonical system names; we might as well all hand-parse uname -a output. zw