Xref: utzoo comp.unix.questions:13358 comp.std.c:1166
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.std.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: How can I find out cc or cpp symbols?
Message-ID: <1989May8.193228.6226@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <10084@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1339@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <7119@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> <1348@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Date: Mon, 8 May 89 19:32:28 GMT

In article <1348@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> Greg.Noel@SanDiego.NCR.COM (Greg Noel) writes:
>>The right way to deal with predefined symbols is to put all
>>dependencies on them in a separate header file, and *manually edit that
>>file* when installing software on a new system.
>
>Your point is taken, although I prefer a Configure script or other mechanism
>to build the information, as there's less chance for error.

The problem with Configure scripts and the like is that unless they are
*very* very cleverly done -- I haven't seen any yet that would qualify,
I'm afraid -- they usually end up making invalid simplifying assumptions.
For example, that the world is divided into System V and BSD systems, when
in fact more and more systems are hybrids.  They do this because some of
the things they want to know are hard to figure out directly, and hence
they try to infer them from questions like "which flavor of Unix do you
have?"... and often get them wrong.  Hand editing is the only real solution
at present.
-- 
Mars in 1980s:  USSR, 2 tries, |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
2 failures; USA, 0 tries.      | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu