Re: [9fans] Re: configure misery

["Russ Cox" <rsc@swtch.com>]

> > Also, FreeBSD has reverted to BWK awk for /usr/bin/awk.
>
> The BSD's would like to be completely free of all GNU software for pretty
> much the same reasons people bash it on this list. Just ask Theo :)

Actually, only OpenBSD, and for completely different reasons.

OpenBSD wants to be free of GNU software for purely ideological reasons.
If the same software were available under the BSD license they would have
no problem whatsoever keeping it around.  Listen to what Theo has said
here -- if 8c were available under a BSD license, he'd use it.  Otherwise not.
Regardless of its technical merits or not vs. gcc.  I'm not aware that
any of the other BSDs are itching to get rid of all their GNU software.
Judging from the CVS and other logs, it appears that FreeBSD switched
to BWK awk mainly because gawk had problems on the Sparc64.

On this list, my impression is that people bash the GNU software because
the canonical examples (gcc, configure, etc.) are overly complicated, slow,
and hard to understand.  These are very practical reasons.  If software
written like Plan 9 were available under a GPL, I would use it and happily
incorporate it into the distribution if it were useful.

Ideology vs. a certain kind of software quality.

Finally (and this is more directed at Lyndon's post than yours) not all
GNU software is crap.  Some of it is quite good, and I believe that gawk
and groff are examples of this.  Arguably groff is built better than troff.
(I'm not as familar with gawk vs. awk so don't construe my lack of comment
as anything other than ignorance.)  Assuming that GNU software has uniform
software quality is simply flawed.

Getting back to the original topic, I think forsyth summed up well.
It's not clear to me that configure buys you much more than #ifdefs
nowadays, though in the days of many varied vendor systems I can
believe it had more utility.  I am particularly amused by the configure
scripts that have begun appearing recently, which churn for a while
and then say something approximating "config.sub: I've never heard
of a system called `plan9' before, so I'm not continuing."

Russ