Which is it -pc- or -unknown-

[Eric Blake]

On 10/20/2017 11:11 AM, cyg Simple wrote:

I may regret joining this thread, but here goes.

>> Your assumption is that the default and chosen triplets must/should be
>> one and the same.  
> 
> No, I assume no such thing.
> 
>> They are not, they need not be, and we are far from
>> being alone in this regard.  Once you accept *that*, then the rest of
>> this will make sense.  Further insistence that they should be is
>> counter-productive at this point.
> 
> You still skirt a reasoning for it to be so.  They don't need to be but
> why aren't they?

Because Cygwin is not the only platform where there is this discrepancy.
 Having a different guess from the chosen triplet is nothing unique to
Cygwin, and therefore, downstream Cygwin need not make any effort to
change things.  Our reasoning for them to be different can thus be
termed "inertia", if you'd like.  But it's not a bug, because it doesn't
break correct usage, and therefore it does not urgently need to be
changed, certainly not with a downstream-only patch.

>  You've failed to answer the question by assuming I
> need to be educated on how it is and refusing to give me a reason of why
> it is. I know that I can specify something other than the default.  I
> don't know why the default is not the same as the chosen.  You keep
> failing to answer that question.  Why does it *need* to stay -unknown-
> instead of -pc-?

No one says the default NEEDs to stay -unknown-, but the point we're
making is that no one has yet provided proof of why it CANNOT stay
-unknown-, and that absent any proof for a reason to change, it's better
to leave well enough alone.

You are more than welcome to propose a patch to upstream config.guess
that provides a different default (config.guess is Free Software, after
all - as long as you abide by the license terms, you can write and post
any patch you like, whether or not we agree with it; but in turn, you
have to be prepared that upstream may reject your patch which leaves you
with carrying your patch in your personal downstream only); but be aware
that your patch may go nowhere upstream.  Part of that is that upstream
already knows about MULTIPLE platforms where the default string guesses
differently than the chosen triple (so Cygwin is not special in that
regards), and part of that is that upstream tends to prefer deferring to
the developers of a given platform where that is practical, and this
thread on the Cygwin list is a good case where the developers of Cygwin
have stated that such a patch is not necessary (it might not be harmful,
but it is not necessary).  Or, if upstream does, for some reason, agree
with your patch, it still is not something so urgent that we would
backport it downstream any faster than normal propagation of other
upstream packages slowly picking up newer config.guess as they release
new tarballs.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org

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