Re: Fw: MKS toolkit the 2nd

[Jeff Conrad]

Paul Eggert wrote:

> For most of those sorts of things it is better to use the Autoconf
> approach, where you test for the features that you need, rather than
> guessing the list of supported features from the canonical system name

Makes sense to me.  And it shouldn't be that difficult to set up the
tests so that they work in most envirnments that will support the build.

> In principle, the Autoconf/Automake approach should work fine on MKS
> etc.

Setting up easy builds for autoconf, GNU m4, and automake, in various
environments would seem like a good place to start.  After an initial
attempt, however, porting the latest release versions of each to Win 32
would appear to be a major undertaking.  Again, running the configure
scripts fail for the same reasons that I mentioned earlier.

> ... most GNU maintainers have only limited time to deal with the hassles
> of platforms that depart widely from the POSIX and/or GNU standards.

Quite understandable.  However, although it would be nice to have a
completely automatic build, I think most folks doing a port to Win 32
(or whatever) would tolerate a few manual settings or tweaks.  The
process might begin in the installation notes, with a comment along the
lines of

   "If you're building under Windows,
   The following are required:
       .
       .
       .
   Do the following:
       .
       .
       .

Jeff Conrad

_________________________________________________________________
Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. 
http://www.hotmail.com