Re: config.sub should normalize *-*-windows-*

[John Ericson]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023, at 8:24 PM, Po Lu wrote:

GNU is an operating system.  Musl-based systems are not GNU, so -musl

represents a ``musl-based operating system''.

> I do not think this is something to be frowned upon because "Operating

> System.", after all, also lacks any rigorous objective definition.  

It does not, within the GNU project at least.  GNU is one operating

system; Android is another, as are Musl-based systems.  And MS-Windows

is a single operating system.

If Musl, GNU Libc, and Android are all different operating systems, why are MSVCRT, MinGW, and Cygwin not different operating systems? Listing off examples is not providing an objective definition.

The simplest reading of history that doesn't require any contortions is that MinGW and Cygwin predated configs with more than 3 components, but Android did not. Had those Windows-based platforms been introduced later, something like the configs that Saleem added to LLVM would have been used from the get go --- grouping the Windows-based platforms and grouping the Linux-based platforms are both advantageous ways of categorizing things, and advantageous for the same reasons.

How is that worse than forcing every program wishing to support MS-Windows to

introduce express support for 2 or 3 disparate and incorrect triplets?

As I said in the other email, I am not forcing anyone to do anything.

Anyway, I plan to merge the latest config.* into Emacs soon.  So

speaking as someone responsible, in part, for keeping the MS-Windows

port of Emacs in working order, I would like to see the change I

illustrated installed ASAP.

You can take the latest version and do nothing else. Anyone that uses *-windows-gnu will have their build fail, just as it fails today. There is no problem.

John