Re: flag day for Solaris portions of config.{guess,sub}

[Andrew Cagney <cagney at gnu dot org>]

>     > Don't we know that most programs that use Autoconf don't actually look
>     > at the configuration name at all?
>
>     Paul Eggert already presented evidence that roughly 10% of a sample of
>     configure.in scripts not only look at the configuration name, but
>     match it against patterns containing the string "solaris" or "sunos".
>     To my mind that is enough to rule out the proposed change as too costly.
>
> I'm surprised it is so many.  As someone pointed out, the real extent of
> the problem depends on how many of them check the version number as well
> as the name.  It should be pretty easy to measure that too.
>
>     And, for the third time, Autoconf is not the only user of
>     config.guess/config.sub.
>
> The point is that most programs nowadays use Autoconf, so other uses are
> few.

Just FYI, there's something of a gap between the theory and the 
[unfortunate] reality here.  To quote GDB's internals doco:

``GDB's host configuration support normally happens via Autoconf. New 
host-specific definitions should not be needed. Older hosts GDB still 
use the host-specific definitions and files listed below, but these 
mostly exist for historical reasons, and will eventually disappear.''

Two observations:

- This upstream change would serve as a useful trigger for making a few 
more of those configurations "disappear".

- There's only marginal return in trying to 100% covert programs such as 
GDB to autoconf (not stopping anyone from trying mind :-).  Far easier 
to let the old systems bit rot and die - trimming them as dead wood in a 
year or so.

Andrew