How to check for a GNU userland

[Jimmy Kaplowitz]

Hi autoconf people. I am one of the people working on the Debian
GNU/NetBSD[1] project, which is exactly what it sounds: a project to
port Debian to NetBSD, using the GNU userland tools. I am preparing a
patch to config.guess to submit to you so that Debian GNU/NetBSD will be
recognized, but there is a problem. The uname command will not in any
way reflect GNU or Debian, since we will be using NetBSD's kernel. So,
what is the best way to check for the GNU userland tools? As a
Debian-specific solution, we could check for the existence of
/etc/debian_version, but we would prefer to do something more generic in
case there are later other flavors of GNU/NetBSD.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Please CC me and retain the
existing CC in all replies, because I and the other Debian GNU/NetBSD
people are by and large not subscribed to the autoconf list.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
address@hidden

[1] The question of whether to call it "Debian GNU/NetBSD" or "Debian
NetBSD" did not reach a consensus, and there are people on both sides of
the issue, but my reading of the thread discussing it indicates that
more people wanted the "GNU/" prefix than not, so that's what I'm using
here.