I'm not sure how to manage the MACHINES file in the distribution. As very few people keep testing the old operating systems documented in MACHINES, it's impossible to guarantee that new versions of Wget will compile or work on them.
One way to fix this would be to accopmany the OS entries in MACHINES with the version of Wget that they apply to. But the problem is that, as each version is released, you will only see which machines the *previous* versions worked on. Also, manual updating of MACHINES after (or immediately before) a release is a bit tedious and almost completely unnecessary. Maybe the current form of MACHINES is simply not relevant any more? Perhaps it should document the architectures Wget is likely to be well tested on, and the anticipated requirements for compilation. I'm not sure how to codify those, though.
