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

[Mike Frysinger]

On Wednesday 15 May 2013 12:26:46 Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On 05/15/2013 06:13 PM, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > On Wednesday 15 May 2013 09:54:08 Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> >> On 05/15/2013 05:53 AM, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> >>> On Monday 08 October 2012 08:46:57 Paul Wise wrote:
> >>>> So, Debian is in the process of bringing up our upcoming arm64 port.
> >>>> Unfortunately we are also coming across lots of packages with rather
> >>>> outdated config.guess and config.sub files (see links below). We could
> >>>> patch every single package that contains config.guess and config.sub
> >>>> but that would be a lot of effort that doesn't scale. We could also
> >>>> patch our build tools but the problem would still exist for other
> >>>> distros.
> >>> 
> >>> yes, Gentoo fixed this for every package in our tree like 9 years ago
> >>> (we added a common function like 11 years ago that ebuilds could call
> >>> manually, but we found that didn't scale).  when you run a standard
> >>> autoconf script, we automatically search for files named "config.sub"
> >>> and "config.guess" and replace them with the up-to-date host copy.  no
> >>> checking or anything :).  in hindsight, that seems like a bad idea,
> >>> but in practice, i think we have yet to find a package that this
> >>> doesn't actually work.
> >> 
> >> Well, I can't imagine a case affecting config.guess, but constructing
> >> cases affecting config.sub is pretty simple.
> >> 
> >> Classical use-case is developing on cross-built packages, which require
> >> a new host/target-tuple and therefore ship a customized/modified
> >> config.sub.
> > 
> > i take the stance that if you haven't merged your code into the GNU
> > config project, then you deserve to break.
> 
> Well, config.sub has allways been amongst those files the autotools
> supposed not to be generated.
> 
> That said, if you replace them by brute-force, you are breaking the UI
> of the autotools - Read: an utterly bad idea. RH/Fedora has done this
> for a very long time and has given up doing so for several years, and
> now is relying on packagers explicitly replacing them (autoreconf -f
> rsp. by patching).

i understand the point you're making.  however, ~10 years of building from 
source in Gentoo and doing this for every single build has shown that in 
practice, it's irrelevant.  we've found exactly one package where this made a 
slight difference (gmp), and even then it was a matter of selecting optional 
optimizations that we can control via other routes.
-mike

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