From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk
Message-Id: <200007130836.EAA20995@cse.psu.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Silly porting fun
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 09:36:13 +0100
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>>I sometimes think so too and yet...it works so very very well and
>>there is just so much software that uses it.  I don't think I've ever
>>seen a configure script fail in a released program. 

i have, frequently, on Unix systems, not Plan 9.
it just has to be one version on (and not differing in essentials)
that they haven't seen before.  the manufacturer tweaks an
include file or moves a library and they fall apart.  makes you wonder why they
bother to probe.  (made me wonder, anyway.)
when that happens, and this is the reason the scheme doesn't
work `very well' (except when it has essentially nothing to do),
you will have the penguin's own time working out what those scripts
are doing, and untangling some bizarrely structured makefiles.

>>(Just don't ask me to write the !@#% things! :)

they use a program to generate them based on some sort of description.
it's a similar idea to all those compilers years ago for the sendmail rewrite language:
don't fix the problem, just bulk it up.  i take comfort from the thought that
whoever writes these things might have decided to become surgeons instead of
programmers.