Re: autoconf and cl.exe

[Paul Eggert]

"Braden McDaniel" <address@hidden> writes:

> The Coin <http://coin3d.org> folks have solved this by using a wrapper that
> translates the POSIX arguments to cl-ese. I'm wondering (1) if such a thing
> as this would be considered a useful addition to autoconf itself;

Yes.  However, we'd need help to maintain it.  I don't use cl or
Windows, for example.

> and (2), if so, what kind of requirements it would need to meet
> (i.e., presumably it ought to be written in sh).

That would normally be one requirement.  However, if cl in practice is
always run on a platform that uses some other shell, it'd be OK to use
that shell.  I.e., if everybody who uses cl uses command.exe (or
whatever the other shell is), and if sh is not universally available,
then you might as well use command.exe.

A couple of other requirements:

* The changes should be decoupled from the rest of Autoconf.  We
  shouldn't have to have the equivalent of "#ifdef DOS" all over the
  place.

* The author of the changes would need to sign the copyright over to
  the FSF.