Re: Partial autoconf transition thoughts

["Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro at ds2 dot pg dot gda dot pl>]

On 11 Jun 2003, Alexandre Oliva wrote:

> >  Agreed, as long as there is a way to have $host_alias and $target_alias
> > set up as desired. 
> 
> We (toplevel, not autoconf) call them $host_noncanonical and
> $target_noncanonical now.  autoconf no longer provides this feature.

 It's good we do that, but it's bad autoconf does not.  Any reasonable
justification?

> > $ locate libbfd-2.13.2.1.so
> > /usr/i386-linux/mips64el-linux/lib/libbfd-2.13.2.1.so
> > /usr/i386-linux/mipsel-linux/lib/libbfd-2.13.2.1.so
> > /usr/lib/libbfd-2.13.2.1.so
> 
> > Where does that "i386-linux" above come from, then?
> 
> Seems like an artifact of your install.  I don't think we use host in
> install pathnames by default.

 Well, see how AM_INSTALL_LIBBFD is defined. ;-)  There was a discussion
last year...

> >  Well, this is probably an option, but I don't know why such a
> > complication necessary.
> 
> It's necessary because of changes in autoconf that make the
> propagation of command-line flags from build to host and host to
> target not easily available.  If we want to avoid using the

 Why is that so?  I am looking at what autoconf does right now and I can
see that $ac_cv_host_alias is set to $ac_cv_build_alias if $host_alias is
empty and $ac_cv_target_alias is set to ac_cv_host_alias if $target_alias
is empty.  Why can't the same be done for $host_alias and $target_alias at
the same place?  I hope not for the lone reason of differing between
implied and user-specified values -- it can be trivially be done
differently and more explicitly => cleanlier. 

> canonicalized names, which we do, using the macros written by
> Nathanael is pretty much the only way to go.

 That's a reasonable approach for now, but why can't autoconf be fixed
ultimately? 

> > Have you seen the dependency graphs I sent yesterday?  I believe my
> > proposal is the simplest solution.
> 
> I believe Nathanael's macros are the implementation of the solution.
> BTW, we already use them.  See config/acx.m4.

 Indeed, but I would prefer to see it done in autoconf so that it need not
be repeated locally elsewhere.

-- 
+  Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland   +
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+        e-mail: macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available        +