Re: backward compatability of tools

[Dr. David Kirkby]

Bruce Korb wrote:
> 
> "Dr. David Kirkby" wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >         I've found in the past bugs in software are often found on one
> > platform that don't seem to get noticed on another. For this reason I
> > just tried to build gcc-2.0 on an old Sun SPARCstation 20 running
> > SunOs 4.1.4 (ie hardware/software about 10 years old) to test some
> > software.
> 
> << travails elided >>
> 
> > Given I thought the aim of autoconf/automake was to allow easy
> > configuration of software, does one not think supporting older
> > hardware useful? I'd certainly like to be able to configure my
> > software so it runs on new and old hardware, if that is possible.
> 
> Depends on:
> 
> 1.  who you talk to
> 2.  whether or not you, personally, want to put the effort into it.
> 
> By adding code to accommodate machines that only a miniscule handful
> of people use, maintainers have to sqander their precious time
> messing with the extra code and everyone else must sit through
> the accumulated fractions of seconds while tests are made to see
> if the current, up-to-date platform is really one of the ancient ones.
> Bad trade off all the way around. 

> A useful goal is to be able to
> target reasonably current versions of HP and IBM and Sun and Linux et al.

Recently I was looking to put another operating system on a Sun for
testing and someone suggested using SunOs 4.1.4, since it is still
used a fair amount. My machine now has gcc-2.0, but there is no way I
could even build gcc-3.2, simply because the configure script won't
work. 

In this case, the main issue seems to be that the configure script
can't find its own temporary files. My guess (and it is a guess) is
that should it find its files, it would probably build the program
okay. Whatever caused that problem, I would guess would not be that
hard to fix, although since I've never looked at the source for either
automake or autoconf, I don't know. 


-- 
Dr. David Kirkby,
Senior Research Fellow,
Department of Medical Physics,
University College London,
11-20 Capper St, London, WC1E 6JA.
Tel: 020 7679 6408 Fax: 020 7679 6269
Internal telephone: ext 46408
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