configuration

[OKUJI Yoshinori]

  Nobody utters here, so I prompt you to discuss something.

  As far as I hear, there is no concrete idea to port Hurd to L4 yet,
right? That's probably because you begin thinking that from a very
abstractive point. There are many, many subtle questions that we must
address. I explain only one question, since it would simply confuse
you to list up all of them at a time.

  It's configuration. Do you know how your host type is defined? If
you don't know, first of all, read the GNU Coding Standards. It is
available at the GNU web site.

  Well, I assume that you already know. As for the GNU system, it is
currently i386-pc-gnu (because Hurd runs only on i386 for
now). Obviously, this is problematic for us. It doesn't include the
microkernel name! How will you solve this? You may think this is
immaterial, but this is NEVER trivial. This kind of configuration is
widely used in GNU. You must realize that you don't have any way to
specify what microkernel you want to use when compiling glibc or any
other software packages.

  A similar problem can be seen in GCC. The "specs" file in GCC
contains several predefinitions. First, look at the file in your GNU
system. Then, you will find that there are some things with which we
can't be happy.

DISCLAIMER: I'll sometimes comment in this list, because I have more
knowledge on GNU Hurd, GNU Mach, L4, GNU libc and Multiboot than
almost all of you. But I won't manage this project, because I have
many tasks which should be solved by *me*.

Okuji