> From: Harlan Stenn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Sun, 08 Sep 2002 03:39:04 -0400 > > If making config.guess return useful/normal values is a goal, then > lets get rid of the cpu-vendor-linux-gnu braindamage
To do that you'll first need to fix the GNU coding standards, which specify the behavior here. (It is a controversial area, so you'll have to make a good case. :-) > The primary reason for using config.guess is to talk about the total > environment No, the primary reason for using config.guess is to talk about the canonical system name. This is a relatively-narrow technical objective; it is a much smaller (and more achievable) goal than specifying the total environment. Jeff Conrad's list of five significant things for Microsoft environments is OK as far as it goes, but that list is too small for actual environments and I don't see any realistic hope of shoehorning all the necessary information into the output of "config.guess", even assuming we could get the coding standards changed. For most of those sorts of things it is better to use the Autoconf approach, where you test for the features that you need, rather than guessing the list of supported features from the canonical system name (or the "total environment" name, whatever that would be). Autoconf and Automake support most (if not all) of the items that he mentions. In principle, the Autoconf/Automake approach should work fine on MKS etc. There are problems in practice, but they are primarily because most GNU maintainers have only limited time to deal with the hassles of platforms that depart widely from the POSIX and/or GNU standards.
