bug-gnu-utils
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: gettext 0.10.37 msgfmt charset naming compatibility on Solaris 8


From: Bruno Haible
Subject: Re: gettext 0.10.37 msgfmt charset naming compatibility on Solaris 8
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 16:54:02 +0200 (CEST)

Eli Zaretskii writes:

> By contrast, testing for conversion tables which are not installed
> yields an executable that cannot use the converters which were missing
> at build time.  Since it is impractical to request that the build
> machine has all of the converters with which the program can ever be
> built, you are in effect saying that programs must be built on the
> same machine on which they will be run

Not necessarily the same machine, but certainly the same
configuration.

This is the general problem of dependencies between packages. When you
configure 'autoconf', it looks for GNU m4, and puts the full pathname
of m4 into the programs it installs. When you configure 'groff', it
looks for p*rl. If the build machine doesn't have p*rl but the
deployment machine has it, some scripts will nevertheless not be
available.

The distributors (of Linux, FreeBSD etc.) take care of this dependency
problem. Those who install GNU packages on Solaris or DOS themselves
have to care about it.

> Moreover, testing run-time behavior in a configure script generally
> means that you cannot build a cross-compiled package.

We must assume the worst case during cross-compilation. If DJGPP would
provide an iconv(), how would an autoconf check be able to evaluate
its usability during cross-compilation? In this case it's best you
cross-compile libiconv first.

Cross compilation ususally gives slightly inferior results than native
compilation. For example, at some time, gcc generated suboptimal code
when compiling for a 64-bit target on a 32-bit host.

Bruno



reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]