Re: howto identify os

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Mon, 2005-01-24 at 20:53 +0100, Francesco Zappa Nardelli wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I am a novice user of autoconf, and I am sorry if my question is
> really silly.
> 
> I am looking for a way to tell configure that the makefile it
> eventually generates should include the file "linux.mak" if we are
> building the software on Linux, and "macosx.mak" if we are building on
> Darwin.  
> 
> How can I reliably detect the operating system of the machine the
> software is built on?  
With autoconf, in general you don't want to check for OSes or even OS
versions, you want check for systems' features, instead.

Checking for "features" instead of using "OS tables" is one of
autoconf's basic working principles.

OS checks ($host_os etc.) should only be used as last resort if all else
fail.

Ralf