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Re: ./configure in debian/rules



Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb@becket.net> writes:
> Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:

>> That's the old way.  Autoconf changed this in the current releases.
>> Now, specifying --host signals that you're cross-compiling, whether it
>> disagrees or not.

>> Yes, this was not a backward compatible change.  A lot of people were
>> upset about it.  And yes, it was a change in the GNU Makefile and
>> configure standards.

> I'm not sure this was appropriate.  Autoconf may be the most frequent
> generator of configure scripts, but the standards for the operation of
> configure scripts are not written by autoconf.

> So, leaving aside the autoconf manual, did the actual GNU configure
> standards change?

It may have, although I don't know what it said before.  What it says now
appears to be consistent with the current Autoconf behavior, although
apparently doesn't require it:

    To compile a program to run on a host type that differs from the build
    type, use the configure option --host=hosttype, where hosttype uses
    the same syntax as buildtype. The host type normally defaults to the
    build type.

If it says anything else about this topic, I can't find it in a quick look
before a meeting.  There doesn't appear to be any specific mention of
"mismatch" or the like, so a very strict reading of the above would imply
that the behavior is undefined if --host is specified but equal to the
build type (since the standards document doesn't explicitly spell out what
happens then).

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>



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