Re: [9fans] Re: configure misery

[Aharon Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com>]

In article <2147483647.1068984706@[192.168.42.6]> you write:
>--On Sunday, November 16, 2003 10:04 AM +0200 Aharon Robbins
><arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
>
>> FWIW, gawk ships as standard on every Linux system and most or all
>> BSDs,
>
>Due to the AT&T lawsuit fiasco, and not because of the joys of
>configure. (I'm not sure if that was the implication you were making.)

The point was twofold:  1. gawk isn't some dinky program that sees no use
except by its author, and 2. that autoconf makes the 1-line configuration
incantation work on dozens of Unix variants.

>Also, FreeBSD has reverted to BWK awk for /usr/bin/awk.

I believe this is for ideological reasons as well.

As for sparc64 problems, I fail to understand why people encountering
these problems FAIL TO REPORT THEM.   This past week was the first time I
got a bug report about 64-bit sparc using gcc and glibc (under Solaris),
and because the machine isn't ssh-able, I can't get in to try and fix it.

Is Autoconf perfect?  No.  Is it better than the alternative?
My experience is yes, Geoff's is no.  Fine.  If everyone is so concerned,
open up a dialogue with the maintainers.  Maybe you'll even get somewhere,
I can't promise anything.  But sitting off in the corner and doing
nothing but kvetching about it for sure won't see it make any progress.

Arnold