Re: VC and too long command lines

[Richard Stallman]

    > There is, but it's time-consuming. Repeatedly retry a longer and longer
    > harmless command until one fails. (libtool does it.)

    Obviously, such "way" is inappropriate for a facility that is supposed
    to run a command of a given size, because the result of that will
    still be a failure.

It would be possible to test this in advance in the build process, and
record the answer.  If all the systems that the same binary, or same
package, will get installed on will have the same limit, then that
will be reliable.

Even if they don't all have the same limit, this approach may be less
unreliable than the present code.

However, it might be better to make a conservative assumption about
how big the command line can be, and always keep generated commands
under that size.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
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