Re: individual software releases for third parties

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden%schemamania.org@localhost>]

On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 14:20:41 +0100
Patrick Welche <prlw1%cam.ac.uk@localhost> wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 06:53:21PM +0300, Aleksey Cheusov wrote:
> > One more example of how NetBSD tools may become portable without
> > autotools.
> 
> I don't see the point of avoiding autotools - {cross,} compiling on
> a variety of architectures is precisely what it is designed to do.

Eh? Autoconf determines compile-time choices by probing the build
host.  How is that a design for cross-compilation? 

The right way to approach portability has never been tried: to
construct a database of alternatives, keyed approximately by os, libc,
and compiler version. That list is orders of magnitude smaller than the
number of build hosts, and that approach has the property of aiding our
understanding instead of obscuring the problem.  

--jkl