Re: configure.lineno?

[Daniel Reed]

On 2004-01-07T12:22-0500, Eric Sunshine wrote:
) On Wed, 7 Jan 2004 10:48:36 -0500 (EST), Daniel Reed wrote:
) > On 2004-01-07T06:45-0500, Eric Sunshine wrote:
) > ) I suppose that nobody has complained about the fact that
) > ) "config.status.lineno" is incompatible with the DOS 8.3 naming
) > ) restriction?
) > Neither is "config.status", nor "configure", for that matter.
) Nevertheless, DOS will silently truncate those to "config.sta" and
) "configur", both of which are still valid filenames.  However, the second
) period in "config.status.lineno" is simply incompatible with DOS naming
) convention which allows only a single period.

There is already some precedent for ignoring such restrictions: Autoconf's
autoheader will happily create src/config.h.in given an AC_CONFIG_HEADER of
src/config.h and no explicit infile. Automake will generate files like
PACKAGE-MAJOR.MINOR.tar.gz and PACKAGE-MAJOR.MINOR.tar.bz2 for "make dist"
rules.


When created in Windows 4.x and viewed in DOS, "tails" and other
transformation tricks are used to create unique 8.3 file names:

Created as                      Created in
                        Windows 4.x     DOS
configure               CONFIG~1        CONFIGUR
configure.in            CONFIG~1.IN     CONFIGUR.IN
config.h                CONFIG.H        CONFIG.H
config.h.in             CONFIG~2.IN     File creation error
config.status           CONFIG~1.STA    CONFIG.STA
config.status.lineno    CONFIG~1.LIN    File creation error

Using tails, if the file name does not already fit in 8.3, it will not be
available under the full name in DOS. Typing "type config.h.in" in a
directory containing CONFIG~2.IN does not yield the desired results. "type
configure" in a directory with CONFIG~1 does not work any better. "type
configure" in a directory with CONFIGUR does work, but you probably can't
rely on everyone using a particular set of tools to extract your package, so
relying on configure always being truncated to CONFIGUR is not a real
solution.

This is not a new problem with the introduction of config.status.lineno,
even if this is the first "multi-period" file created during a ./configure
run (as opposed to during autoconf or make dist). Files like config.h.in
simply can not be expressed in DOS, whether created in Windows or otherwise,
so configure scripts built to read from them will fail. So, complaining that
configure scripts will be unable to create config.status.lineno seems to be
missing the point that Autotools doesn't *really* support strictly-8.3
environments.

-- 
Daniel Reed <address@hidden>    http://naim-users.org/nmlorg/   
http://naim.n.ml.org/
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. -- Albert
Einstein, Physicist