From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) In-Reply-To: <13426df10711141322t3eb56f10uea8cba2b23f45f03@mail.gmail.com> References: <13426df10711141119s5433b14cx90615fd0c95404c4@mail.gmail.com> <13426df10711141322t3eb56f10uea8cba2b23f45f03@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <0F2096E1-510E-44A4-AC46-AAE91D62FE36@mac.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Pietro Gagliardi Subject: Re: [9fans] Re: Ruby port Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:12:38 -0500 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Topicbox-Message-UUID: fbf1f7b2-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Nov 14, 2007, at 4:22 PM, ron minnich wrote: > On Nov 14, 2007 11:25 AM, erik quanstrom wrote: > >> a good percentage of the stuff configured is not required. configure >> spends a lot of energy looking for spiffy optimizations that can >> safely >> be skipped. Configure also screws us up when it's needed. Especially when I'm having problems compiling software because I'm missing a library I don't want to take the time to install! DON'T DYNAMICALLY LINK. Good thing Plan 9 don't (as far as I know). It also introduces a complication. How automated is autotools when you have this: see /n/sources/contrib/pietro/Autotools.png It's how autotools works. The circles are programs you run to get a configure file! It should be called a portability nightmare! And how about this in the category of pointless: Checking for C compiler... Is that even necessary? Do you think someone compiling a program written in C would have a C compiler on them? Oh, and when you find out it's gcc, why does it go on to check whether or not it has specific flags and header files - especially standard header files, because I don't think you would need to ensure you have standard header files anyway anymore because everyone who uses anything made after 1990 (pretty much 99.024% of the population) use Standard C? Why not just assume those flags and headers are there? I once tried to contribute to AbiWord. But Compilation using autotools held me back. And then I discovered troff, and that's what I'm using from now on (although I might make a mm to AbiWord converter one day). Oh how the mighty GNU have fallen.