Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Installation woes (Re: Passing on unwanted groups)
Message-ID: <1990Aug24.165844.3563@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Aug15.164651.26664@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Aug21.161506.21784@zoo.toronto.edu> <3ND5KOC@xds13.ferranti.com> <5fq0f2.zm6@smurf.sub.org>
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 90 16:58:44 GMT

In article <5fq0f2.zm6@smurf.sub.org> urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs) writes:
>Larrys config stuff finds out all about the machine you don't want to know
>anyway, and C news asks you...

We find it very interesting that we get mail occasionally saying "thank god
you didn't use Configure!".  All that automatic guesswork is not infrequently
wrong, and is *invariably* wrong if you are trying to configure for a machine
other than the one you are running on... which is increasingly common in
these network-oriented days.

You might want to make a list of the things "build" asks you, and figure
out which ones could be guessed automatically.  Not very many.
-- 
Committees do harm merely by existing. | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                       -Freeman Dyson  |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry