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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: "am I a vax" commands (was Re: /bin/true)
Message-ID: <603@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 6-May-86 16:20:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.603
Posted: Tue May  6 16:20:08 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 8-May-86 20:27:58 EDT
References: <481@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU> <518@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.ARPA
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL)
Lines: 12

Greg and Guy have made some good points.  I agree that the current
situation is inadequate in general; there is NO good universal way
to determine target system specifics at "make" or compile time.

This makes it even more important to avoid system dependencies in
code that is targeted to be used on a variety of systems.  There
are some cases where one simply has to take machine architecture
into account, but the vast majority of such applications need not
do so, and many others can be structured so that system-specific
code is limited to a small handful of common interface modules.
This approach, coupled with widespread adoption of language and
environment standards, makes porting much less painful than usual.