From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Michael Elizabeth Chastain <chastain@cygnus.com>
To: eliz@is.elta.co.il
Cc: gdb@sourceware.cygnus.com
Subject: Re: GDB compile problem.
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 10:47:00 -0000
Message-id: <200102261847.KAA05097@bosch.cygnus.com>
X-SW-Source: 2001-02/msg00374.html

Hi Eli,

> PS. How do you even check that the preprocessor ``works''?

That part is easy.  You preprocess this file:

  int i;

... and check that the output contains the line "int i"

> There's no end to this.  What if someone sets "CC=/not/a/compiler/at/all",
> or "LN_S=/anything/but/ln"?  If that happens, the configury stuff will 
> begin falling apart all over the place, with all kinds of weirdo error 
> messages.

"Weirdo error messages" are not a problem.  They may not be obvious to
the user, but they will be more obvious to the support people monitoring
the newsgroups.  The problem is when the configury stuff runs without
no errors but produces useless config.h files.

I would definitely draw the line so that "CPP" is inside it.  "CPP" really
is an ambiguous word and prone to misunderstanding; in my opinion, CC and
LN_S aren't.  Even the Gnu Compiler Collection acknowledges "FILE.cpp"
as an extension for C++ source code.

> Moreover, these variables are there _precisely_ so the end-user could set 
> them to whatever she pleases without being subject to Autoconf's 
> scrutiny, for those cases where Autoconf isn't smart enough.

I definitely accept this point.

  User: my $FOO is named "bar" ...
  Software: your $FOO does not fit my pre-conceptions ...

That would not be very Unix-like.

Michael