Updating top-level autoconf to 2.59
Michael Eager
eager@eagercon.com
Thu Feb 8 17:07:00 GMT 2007
Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> "Joseph S. Myers" <joseph@codesourcery.com> writes:
>
>> * If you want to build an explicitly cross tool despite host == target, or
>> act like you are cross compiling despite build == host, or build a native
>> tool (i.e. one using the native directory layout and installed as plain
>> "gcc") despite host != target, or act like you aren't cross compiling (so
>> can run execute tests for $host) despite build != host, these should be
>> determined by explicit configure options; not by which of build, host and
>> target where specified explicitly and which were defaulted. (And not by
>> older autoconf's experiments to see if it can execute a program built for
>> the host.)
>
> I completely agree that this is how it should work. Unfortunately,
> this is not how autoconf {2.x,x>13} works. I don't agree with a
> number of the decisions made by the autoconf maintainers. However, I
> do think that as long we use autoconf, there is some benefit to be
> gained by following autoconf's default behaviour.
I'll stick my toe into this discussion.
Much of the discussion seems to be about how autoconf should guess what
the user intended by --host, --build, --target. When --host or --build
is omitted, autoconf makes guesses about what the user might have
specified, then uses these guesses (as well as the exec test) to determine
whether this is a native or cross build. The result is that the user
tries to guess how autoconf is trying to guess what the user means.
When user=me, I go crazy. :-)
I would much prefer explicitly specifying that the build is cross or
native. I want to specify --cross or --native (or the equivalent).
I'd be happy to discard backward compatibility.
--
Michael Eager eager@eagercon.com
1960 Park Blvd., Palo Alto, CA 94306 650-325-8077
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