Re: On Compatibility

[Jonathan Shapiro]

This is what we tried. It turned out that it would have been easier to just 
bring up a POSIX environment in order to run autoconf semi-natively.

Shap

-----Original Message-----
>From: "Alfred M. Szmidt"<address@hidden>
>Sent: 10/25/05 3:05:52 PM
>To: "Jonathan S. Shapiro"<address@hidden>
>Cc: "address@hidden"<address@hidden>
>Subject: Re: On Compatibility
>
>   It is hypothetically possible to get all of the configured files
>   right by hand, but in practice we didn't have enough years in our
>   expected lives to do it. Perhaps you can show us how to do
>   it. Assistance would certainly be welcome.
>
>Hack configure.ac, generate configure on another platform, continue
>hacking untill port is done.  No need whatsoever to have autoconf on
>the target system (you could even cross compile!).
>
>   Sure it is. Consider bash.
>
>So lets consider bash, what is wrong with it?  You state no arguments
>why it is bad, only that it is based on ksh, which was based on sh and
>that it dates back to the beginning of UNIX.
>
>Emacs must be complete and utter crap if you base things based on how
>long they have existed... And you'd be suprised how similar todays
>Emacs is to the Emacs that ran on ITS.
>
>   Or m4. Hell, even Stu Feldman thought m4 was crap, and he wrote it!
>
>Care to give an actual reason why m4 is crap?  It does what it does
>quiet well, like C, which is infact far worse than M4.
>