Path: utzoo!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!srcsip!jhereg!mark From: mark@jhereg.Minnetech.MN.ORG (Mark H. Colburn) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: C news: file ownership and running build 47386 times Message-ID: <365@jhereg.Minnetech.MN.ORG> Date: 21 Nov 89 14:50:10 GMT References: <3054@splut.conmicro.com> <1989Nov20.183239.1809@utzoo.uucp> Reply-To: mark@jhereg.UUCP (Mark H. Colburn) Organization: Open Systems Architects, Inc., Mpls, MN Lines: 30 In article <1989Nov20.183239.1809@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >Yes. We're not impressed by the way it crashes and burns on systems that >are BSD/SysV hybrids, especially since many modern systems are such. It >has this ingrained notion that the world is divided into 4BSD and System V >and your system *must* be one or the other. More generally, it tries to >be very clever and consequently has a lot of wired-in assumptions, and >it fails badly when those assumptions fail. Our stuff needs a lot more >hand-holding but is more portable. While it is true that some of the assumptions in the currently distributed scripts are not correct, I would like to point out that it is possible to (somewhat easily) change these assumptions. Each of the assumptions for a particular area (such as directory library icnlude file) is encapsulated in a particular "unit". Each unit has a specific structure which allows the ultimate configure script to be built from it. The package implementor can go through and modify the units to represent better assumptions, making the configure script more robust. And while configure does get some things wrong, it handles a fair number of cases correctly. It has also been getting better about it's "the world is either BSD or USG assumptions." It may be that using it would be more pain than its worth, but you might at least take a quick look at it. Also, but the number of times it gets suggested, it looks like most people have had good experiences with it in the past. -- Mark H. Colburn mark@Minnetech.MN.ORG Open Systems Architects, Inc.