Re: config.guess and freedom (was: 1.8 and mkdir_p)

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 11:53, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:

> Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> | Sorry for having to say this, but IMO, configure scripts relying on
> | config.guess'ed values are "badly designed and fundamentally flawed".
> 
> It's a pity you think that.  I always found libtool to be rather useful.
Well, I don't know how libtool applies config.guess and if/how my
problems with libtool are connected to config.guess'ing. 
I'd assume they are not connected to config.guess'ing.

Anyway, my comment was meant generally. I was referring to attempts to
apply config.guess'ed valued to configuration tables, e.g. something
similar to this:
case $host_os in
redhat7.3) f=/etc/txt.cfg;;
redhat8.0) f=/etc/sysconfig/txt.cfg;;
redhat*) f=/etc/foo/txt.cfg;;
suse9.0) f=/etc/var/txt.cfg;;
solaris*) f=/etc/config/txt.cfg;;
...
esac

In short terms (esp. when a package is new and the set of "supported
OSes" is small) this is tempting, but in longer terms, it's a
maintainer's nightmare.

Ralf