Why does config.guess come up with such wacky stuff?

[Robert Lipe]

> > I posit that those building distributions are better qualified to
> > understand the issues involved and override the defaults than the
> > typical "download the tarball. type configure. type make" user.
> 
> I guess the question comes down to who do you want/need to cater to more?
>     Those that build and run their own downloads (singletons), Those that
>     build dists for use by others ( single or multiple architectures),

I believe the consensus was that your first answer was right.  The
defaults should provide an optimial build for those folks.  Distribution
builders are expected to know what they're doing.

Yes, I know that includes you.  Yes, I know that makes more work for you.

> > > > case `uname -X | egrep '^Machine` in *i80486) UNAME_MACHINE=i486;;
> > > > *Pentium$) UNAME_MACHINE=i586;; *PentII*) UNAME_MACHINE=i686;; esac
> > >
> > > Like OSr5 does.. as I say my original opinion was that way - I was
> > 
> > Yes, like OpenServer.
> >    And like Linux.   
> 
> Well thats a extremely convincing point..
> If any of the *BSD's do it (or intend to) you've could say I'm more convinced 
> we should change it ..

In this very conversation, I think we saw lights above the heads of
Solaris and one of the BSD's so I expect they will do it soon.

> > the CPU field.  If we unlock it we have pathnames "floating" but things
> > are more likely to work better by default for more users of GCC.
> 
> For those that build gcc and run on what they build on and 
> don't redistribute their built binaries.

Which is the majority of the users.  See also: binary kit distributors
probably know what they're doing.

> > Do the other packages ever have user-visible data (not private libs
> > as in the case of Perl or even GCC) that reflect this field?
> >
> > If not, we're no worse off than we are today where GCC's
> > config.guess defaults to a very different format on UW7 than the
> > autoconf config.guess does.
>
> Havent come across a large number to date but I don't play with
> the entire range of Open Source software - Perl is the most
> indicated/obvious case and its irrelevant to this

I have a feeling we're about to reverse this decision...