Re: Why was handling of program_prefix changed?

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

Hello Akin, autoconf developers,

On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, Akim Demaille wrote:
> Ian> Akim Demaille <address@hidden> writes:
> >> But wrt prefix_program, if *you*, Ian, tell me this change is wrong
> >> (as opposed to good but implies more work elsewhere), then I'm
> >> revert that bit.
> Ian> I was accepting that this change was made and will not be undone,
> Ian> and I was pointing out the additional work which needed to be
> Ian> done by somebody.  But I don't know who that person is.  Until
> Ian> the work is done, gcc will not be able to adopt the new autoconf.

Well, right now in autoconf 2.52, part of the code works just as currently
documented (i.e. crosscompiling is activated if --build and --host differ):

# FIXME: should be removed in autoconf 3.0.
if test "x$host_alias" != x; then
  if test "x$build_alias" = x; then
    cross_compiling=maybe
    echo "$as_me: WARNING: If you wanted to set the --build type, don't use 
--host.
    If a cross compiler is detected then cross compile mode will be used." >&2
  elif test "x$build_alias" != "x$host_alias"; then
    cross_compiling=yes
  fi
fi

Currently we have some major breakage in Debian re. crosscompilation, and we
really would prefer to fix it only once (since it does mean changing all
packages that use autoconf, and that's quite a lot).  That means we have
thousands of packages using a mix of 2.13 and 2.52 autoconf scripts that
need to be modifed.  We would also like to tell configure what arch to build
for directly while at it (even when not crosscompiling), to avoid the
config.guess call.

(FYI, crosscompilation in Debian is archived by setting some environment
variables, which set the desired host and target archs. These variables are
always set, since we don't want packages building for iX86-pc-linux-gnu, for
X != 3, just because the build machine is not an old i386; you are
crosscompiling if host != build arch).

Well, as long as the crosscompilation behaviour is not changed ever again, I
will be grateful to you guys.  After all, it is not funny to break
God-knows-how-many-hundreds-of-packages at every new autoconf release :)

So, which behaviour will _really_ be supported, officially, from now on?  If
autoconf will change that crosscompilation stuff yet again in the future, I
would like to know about that officially... so that I can justify a proposal
to force all Debian packages to call a wrapper instead of the configure
script, or something :(

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh