Re: Is this a bug in autoconf? (patch included)

[Pavel Roskin]

Hello, Akim!

> Pavel> Usage of HOST without --host= is error-prone and should be
> Pavel> connsidered as deprecated (IMHO).
> 
> So, would there be a strong opposition to its complete removal?

I cannot say about "strong" opposition, but at least configure should exit
with an error. The error message should perhaps mention "--host". I can
imagine scripts using bare HOST, so we should be careful to inform people.

It happened to me several times that a malformed option was understood as
HOST. It is shame that "./configure foo" succeeds if AC_CANONICAL_* is not
used.

By the way, configure --help prints now:

Usage: ./configure [OPTION]... [VAR=VALUE]... [HOST]
...
Host type:
  --host=HOST        configure for HOST [guessed]
  --build=BUILD      configure for building on BUILD [BUILD=HOST]
  --target=TARGET    configure for TARGET [TARGET=HOST]

in all three cases: no AC_CANONICAL_*, AC_CANONICAL_HOST and
AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM. This is quite inconsistent.

Pavel