Re: Why was handling of program_prefix changed?

[Franz Sirl]

At 03:09 18.05.2002, Paul Eggert wrote:
> > Hmm, yeah, a separator would be better. And are $build, $host, $target
> > really deprecated?
>
> That's my vague impression, from looking at the code.

I think it makes more sense in this case to check the canonicalized names, 
but it would work nearly identical in either case.

> > What I want is a way to set $target_alias on "native" builds without
> >
> >          a) triggering a cross-compile
> >          b) setting $program_prefix
>
> Now I'm starting to understand.  Can't you get the effect that you
> want with "--target=HOST-TYPE --program-prefix=''"?  The documentation
> suggests that this should do the trick; why doesn't it?

Yes, it does the trick, but it's unintuitive and cumbersome, afterall since 
ages autoconf tells us:

address@hidden:~/BUILD/kvirc-3.0.0]$ ./configure i386-redhat-linux
configure: WARNING: you should use --build, --host, --target

No mention of --program-prefix, so even if you change to use 
--build=i386-redhat-linux --host=i386-redhat-linux 
--target=i386-redhat-linux, you won't get back the original behaviour. 
Lateron there is:

checking whether we are cross compiling... no

yet autoconf insists on setting $program_prefix without even reporting it. 
I have a very strong opinion that _defaulting_ $program_prefix is very 
wrong here in the no-cross case. Maybe you want to solve it differently, 
but it should be solved.

Franz.