Re: [Bug-tar] ./configure has become unusable slow

[Joerg Schilling]

>From address@hidden  Thu Nov 13 19:16:55 2003

>Joerg Schilling <address@hidden> writes:

>> Running ./configure now takes nearly 6 hours on a 
>> 25 MHz Motorola 68020 running SunOS-4.1

>A 25 MHz Motorola 68020!  Wow!  I haven't used one of those since the 1980s.

This machine still (since > 10 years) runs my ISDN/IP interface and
is used for portability checks...


>Anyway, Autoconf-generated 'configure' scripts have known problems
>dealing with SunOS 4.x, because of inefficiencies (and worse: bugs) in
>SunOS 4.x /bin/sh (see, for example, Sun bugs 1123136, 1134744,
>1170383).

Well these 3 bugs are most likely only one bug and have been reported from
mid 1994 up to spring 1996. I never found any autoconf related problem
so it seems that there is a work around.

If somebody did change autoconf in 1996, I would understand the reason.
Doing it now looks insane.

>If this problem had arisen 10 or 15 years ago it would have been a big
>deal, but nowadays few people outside of museums still actually use
>SunOS 4.x.  The current suggestion for computer-museum curators
>etc. is to port Bash to your SunOS 4.x host.  If 'bash' is in your
>$PATH and if 'sh' doesn't have modern features, 'configure' will use
>'bash'.

>PS.  This is really an 'autoconf' issue, not a 'tar', issue, so I'll
>CC: this message to bug-autoconf.

Well you could use a autoconf version for GNU tar that does not have 
this problem.

Jörg

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