Re: uname problem on Mac OS X

[Bob Proulx]

TjL wrote:
>  uname -p: i386
> guname -p: unknown

The GNU uname program simply reports the result from the kernel system
call uname(2).

  man 2 uname

If the kernel does not report the processor type then GNU uname does
not have any information to work with.  Some vendors compile programs
specifically for a single architecture and hard code in a value but
this is not portable.  The 'uname -p' option is not one of the
standard options and I recommend that use of it is avoided.

  http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/uname.html

Actually use of uname for any purpose other than returning the system
name is quite troublesome for portability.  I would avoid it in all
cases other than when you know that it is going to return meaningful
data.

> Is there a way to have the GNU versions of these programs  
> automatically prepend a 'g' (i.e. 'gls' instead of 'ls') when  
> installed?  I've seen that done on some systems but wasn't sure if  
> that was an automatic thing or not.

All programs that use the GNU autotools configure process can be
configured this way at ./configure time.

  ./configure --program-prefix=g

Then compile and install normally.  The installed programs will have a
'g' prepended to the front of the names.

Bob