Re: [patch] to libstdc++-v3: fix for the Bourne shell

[msokolov at ivan dot Harhan dot ORG (Michael Sokolov)]

Zack Weinberg <zackw@stanford.edu> wrote:

> Your suggested change therefore introduces a bug: if the configure
> script is run with MAKE set to the empty string, it will choke.

I do not consider this a bug. A crucial feature of UNIX and its workalikes is
that if you intentionally shoot yourself in the foot, no one will stop you. I
would certainly consider setting MAKE to an empty string as intentionally
shooting yourself in the foot. Why should configure specifically guard against
this bogus setting and not others? How is MAKE= different from
MAKE=white_rabbit?

> A
> precisely equivalent change would be to change ${MAKE:-make} to $MAKE,
> and insert
>
> if test -z "$MAKE"; then MAKE=make; fi
>
> before all uses of $MAKE.

If you want you can always make a patch. I checked mine in per Alexandre
Oliva'a explicit approval, who has the full authority over the files in
question.

> I would also like to remind you that there is no unique "UNIX" nor is
> there any unique "Bourne shell."

Wrong. Bourne is the shell's author's last name. The Bourne shell is the one
that Steve Bourne wrote. Period. No other shell can be called the Bourne shell.
Tne Bourne shell appears in the UNIX V7 distribution, it is the standard V7
UNIX shell.

Also UNIX is one specific system. It is the system described in Dennis M.
Ritchie and Ken Thompson's article "The UNIX Time-Sharing System" in the July
1974 issue of Communications of the ACM.

> the incarnation of Unix you are using (4.2 or 4.3 BSD, I forget
> which).

I use 4.3BSD. Specifically, the current development version of
4.3BSD-Quasijarus, last change checked in [looking in the SCCS log] on 01/01/07
17:28:38 PST. 4.3BSD is a version of UNIX, not Unix. UNIX is case-sensitive.

-- 
Michael Sokolov
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International Engineering and Science Task Force

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