Re: AC_C_BIGENDIAN vs. Darwin

[Mo DeJong]

On Mon, 25 Jun 2001, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

> Mike Castle writes:
> 
> > On Sun, Jun 24, 2001 at 01:51:27PM -0700, Matt Watson wrote:
> > > I'm trying to figure out the best way to fix this. Is the
> >
> > Fix the code so it doesn't require knowledge of the endianess of the
> > machine.
> >
> > Personally, I'd vote for getting rid of AC_C_BIGENDIAN.  No need to in
> > supporting poor programming.
> 
> Great idea if you have protocols and file formats defined around this.

As someone that has written code to deal with iconv() sillyness,
I can attest to the fact that there are places where you just
can't "code it right". I think AC_C_BIGENDIAN needs to be updated
to use the version from the autoconf archive that works
for cross compiles. Lets face it, most folks creating a
dist don't test the cross case. It does not help that
calling AC_C_BIGENDIAN fails when cross compiling.
Sure, there are going to be some scary edge cases
like FAT binaries on OSX, but folks will just have
to deal with those.

Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc