Sender:	rich AT phekda DOT freeserve DOT co DOT uk
Message-ID:	<3E1029E3.E679E723@phekda.freeserve.co.uk>
Date:	Mon, 30 Dec 2002 11:11:31 +0000
From:	Richard Dawe <rich AT phekda DOT freeserve DOT co DOT uk>
X-Mailer:	Mozilla 4.77 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.23 i586)
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MIME-Version:	1.0
To:	DJGPP workers <djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com>
Subject:	<sys/config.h>
Reply-To:	djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com

Hello.

I was trying to build Emacs CVS against DJGPP CVS yesterday. I had some
trouble, because of a typo of the one of the Emacs config headers -
src/config.in. But I noticed that the typo was in a section conditional on
!HAVE_SIZE_T. Strange, I thought, we have size_t and surely configure would
have detected it. It turns out that Emacs builds against the header
<sys/config.h>.

<sys/config.h> describes itself:

"/* config.h for DJGPP.

   This is usually generated automatically from config.h.in by the
   configure script.  However, it is very hard to run that script under
   MS-DOS, because of its extensive use of Unix shell features.  This
   header file is provided so you can skip the autoconfigure step
   altogether and go directly to the compilation step (after copying
   Makefile.in to Makefile and setting the defaults there).

   There are several parts in this header file, which closely follow the
   GNU Autoconf procedures."

(Rest of description omitted.)

I can see that this script was useful in earlier days, but why do we have it
now? configure scripts run just fine now. This header could be a maintenance
problem.

I think we need to do one of the following:

(a) remove <sys/config.h> and force all packages (Emacs?) to use configure;
(b) look at the latest autoconf/automake and update <sys/config.h>.

I prefer option (a). Option (b) will lead to DJGPP being behind
autoconf/automake tests all the time. Given how long it takes between DJGPP
releases, I don't think this is acceptable, especially when configure works.

Bye, Rich =]

-- 
Richard Dawe [ http://www.phekda.freeserve.co.uk/richdawe/ ]

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