Re: flag day for Solaris portions of config.{guess,sub}

[Rainer Orth <ro at TechFak dot Uni-Bielefeld dot DE>]

Ben Elliston <bje@wasabisystems.com> writes:

> Paul Eggert has been asking over the course of the last year when
> config.{guess,sub} will start to correctly identify Solaris version
> numbers.  The problem is that config.guess misidentifies Solaris 7, 8,
> and 9, and it will probably misidentify Solaris 10 (unless Sun
> marketing changes Solaris names again).  For example, on a Solaris 8
> box, config.guess outputs "sparc-sun-solaris2.8"; but there never was
> and never will be a "Solaris 2.8", as Solaris 2.6 (SunOS 5.6) was
> immediately followed by Solaris 7 (SunOS 5.7).
> 
> The time to fix this is now long overdue.  Before I do, I want to give
> plenty of warning to the GNU packages that comprise the toolchain, as
> these are typically most sensitive to the output of config.guess.  Any
> objections?  I have documented the change in a new config/NEWS file
> that is already committed to subversions.gnu.org.

I consider this sort of change a maintenance nightmare: suddenly all
packages that could handle all versions of Solaris 2 in the same way
(matching *-*-solaris2*) have to handle *-*-solaris2*, *-*-solaris[789] and
*-*-solaris2.1*.  I see no real reason to follow Sun's marketing nonsense
in this issue, and as you already indicate, there's a `good' change that
Solaris 10 will be called differently again.  All Sun employees are
talking about Solaris Next, e.g., knowing all too well that marketing will
get it's dirty fingers on this issue before FCS.  I've been told that they
were very close to calling Solaris 9 something completely different.

If one really *must* change something for technical correctness, switch to
*-*-sunos5*, which will allways remain correct as has already been
indicated, i.e. whatever they happen to call Solaris 10 by the time it's
released, the O/S will be SunOS 5.10.  But even this sort of change
unnecessarily confuses users and creates a maintenance burden on all users
of config.{guess, sub}.

	Rainer

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Rainer Orth, Faculty of Technology, Bielefeld University