On 2008-03-19 23:31:18 +0100, Stepan Kasal wrote: > One of the goals of Autoconf is to make the configure script portable > to a wide variety of platforms. To achieve that, Autoconf often has > to work around a known bug of a system. But that does not mean > Autoconf should collect workarounds for every bug it encounters.
I can understand that. However, I thought that the fix could be simple enough to be added to autoconf. > If there is a bug on a system by a huge vendor, which is reluctant to > fix it, or if users are not able to upgrade to a fixed version, for > whatever reason, then it is crucial to work around that bug to enable > autoconfiscated projects to be built on those systems. > > If, on the other extreme, a student developing His Own Best > GNU/Linux Distribution makes a mistake, then he should rather fix > that mistake, and the consumers of His Own shall rather upgrade. Well, concerning the missing diff, the OS doesn't come from a student, but comes pre-installed from Sharp (for the Zaurus) and Nokia (for the N810). For the Zaurus, I didn't see the problem since I installed the diffutils, but other users might see it and wonder what happens. I've just reported the bug on maemo.org: https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3032 But concerning the Zaurus, the OS is no longer supported, AFAIK. There would be another reason to use cmp instead of diff: it is simpler and lighter. So, why not using cmp and let the cygwin(?) developers fix their tools? > In the case of missing diff, where s/diff /cmp / is a working fix, it > would sufice to add an alias or link diff -> cmp. This would be bad as this could make other tools that use diff behave even more erratically. > If I understand it correctly, then the busybox version of ls does not > support the full set of options; Well, in practice, the unsupported options are never used in scripts. So, this isn't much a problem for scripts. > BTW: does Maemo contain awk? Yes, though I haven't tested it. But the Zaurus doesn't have it (and there will be no upgrades). > The upcoming release of Autoconf is going to use it for > instantiation of files nd headers, so virtually every > autoconf-2.62-generated configure is going to require awk for its > operation. What does the current autoconf do? -- Vincent Lefèvre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.org/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
