config.guess and Linux/GNU

[Martin v. Loewis]

> I have no personal opinion, but my understanding was the `linux-gnu'
> was the FSF way of spelling the system name, just as GNU/Linux is the
> way the FSF names the system(s) that some folks call just plain Linux.
> 
> Was this an intentional change?  

I don't know whether the change was intentional, but I believe your
understanding is incorrect. At some point, the target triplet was
changed to optionally be a target quadruple, with the fourth part
being the "environment". This was only used on Linux, where "gnu"
really indicated presence of the GNU system, in particular of the GNU
C library.

At the time the feature was introduced, the rationale was that there
could be also a sparc-sun-solaris-gnu (etc), which is a Sun Solaris
kernel with a GNU system on top of it.

Regards,
Martin