Path: utzoo!utstat!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!dog.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!humu!pegasus!richard
From: richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Installation woes (Re: Passing on unwanted groups)
Message-ID: <1990Aug26.085636.19024@pegasus.com>
Date: 26 Aug 90 08:56:36 GMT
References: <3ND5KOC@xds13.ferranti.com> <5fq0f2.zm6@smurf.sub.org> <1990Aug24.165844.3563@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: Pegasus,  Honolulu
Lines: 25

>>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.

As with anything, experiences and tastes vary.  The question is how many
people would prefer not to have something like Configure -- I suspect
it is a very small minority.

And the number of people cross-compiling Cnews has got to be miniscule.
Configure handles configuring for a different machine (but with the same
OS and CPU types) quite well.

>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.

At least half.


-- 
Richard Foulk		richard@pegasus.com