Re: Host settings for GNU in configure*?

[Guillem Jover]

On Thu, 2011-08-25 at 15:07:47 +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> grep -- --build /usr/bin/dh_*
> 
> has at least
> 
> /usr/bin/dh_make:                      'CROSS= --build $(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE) 
> --host $(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)'."\n".
> 
> but what is your actual problem with it?

This is coming from the debhelper perl code in:

  /usr/share/perl5/Debian/Debhelper/Buildsystem/autoconf.pm

> Svante Signell, le Thu 25 Aug 2011 14:50:33 +0200, a écrit :
> > On Thu, 2011-08-25 at 11:01 +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> > > Svante Signell, le Thu 25 Aug 2011 10:58:43 +0200, a écrit :
> > > > On Thu, 2011-08-25 at 10:48 +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> > > > > Svante Signell, le Thu 25 Aug 2011 10:20:44 +0200, a écrit :
> > > > > > A common denominator of $host is
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > c) *-gnu*
> > > > > 
> > > > > This one: don't care the actual architecture, don't care the actual
> > > > > version of GNU.
> > > > 
> > > > It is not unique if * means wildcard,
> > > 
> > > Yes, but that's the best we can do.
> > It looks like the triple
> > 
> > CPU_TYPE-MANUFACTURER-OPERATING_SYSTEM e.g. i686-unknown-gnu 
> > 
> > is not unique but
> > 
> > CPU_TYPE-MANUFACTURER-KERNEL-OPERATING_SYSTEM e.g. i686-unknown-hurd-gnu
> > 
> > would. Or should the kernel be gnumach?

The GNU system always canonicalizes to foo-bar-gnu*, no other system
does, configure always operates on the canonicalized form (produced by
config.sub).

In the same way as GNU/Linux always canonicalizes to foo-bar-linux-gnu*.

As said before you might want to be more specific in your matches
depending on the case, but that's just specifics.

In addition there's always the option of matching against more
specific variables like host_os, host_vendor or host_cpu.

There's really no need to add a new quadruplet for GNU, it has worked
fine up to now.

> I don't know the historical details, but the way I understand it is that
> GNU is GNU, and GNU/Linux came afterwards and used linux-gnu. Simply use
> linux* or gnu* and it'll work. The only unfortunate thing is *-gnu*.

Well *-gnu* is good if you want any GNU/*, it's of course a problem if
you want somethine else. :)

regards,
guillem