Re: [RFC] getting rid of the config.guess/sub problem when bootstrapping new ports/systems

[Earnie Boyd]

On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 2:34 AM, Ben Elliston wrote:
> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 02:54:20PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
>
>> There are thousands of copies of config.guess/sub (or configure
>> scripts) out there (in tarballs) with no support for this at
>> all. Once it is added to config.guess/sub in git (or autoconf) then
>> it will take many years before the majority of copies of
>> config.guess/sub (or configure scripts) have support for this. This
>> is what I mean by bootstrap phase.
>
> Right.  Just thinking out loud: isn't the Autoconf concept of "aux
> dir" of use here?  That's where configure looks for config.guess.
>
> The latest version of install-sh, config.guess, etc. could live in
> such a system-wide directory.  Unfortunately, it's not possible to set
> auxdir from the configure command line as you can with --srcdir, etc.

Maybe have a common directory of /usr/[local/]share/autoconf/auxdir
and teach autoconf to look there if it doesn't find
config.guess/config.sub in the project directory and copy them when
copy is specified?  I dislike the environment variable idea.  Too
fragile, someone forgets it is set and then has trouble because the
config.guess/config.sub he's trying to use isn't being used.  I know
you mean for the variable to be set at autoreconf/configure usage but
there are always idiots who install it into their .profile files and
forget they did that.

-- 
Earnie
-- https://sites.google.com/site/earnieboyd