Mail Archives: djgpp-workers/2002/12/30/13:54:09
> Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 11:11:31 +0000
> From: Richard Dawe <rich AT phekda DOT freeserve DOT co DOT uk>
>
> "/* 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.
Emacs is traditionally built by running config.bat, not its Unix
configure script. config.bat edits config.in and Makefile.in files
using a few Sed scripts in the `msdos' subdirectory (which see).
While moving to the configure script might be a Good Thing, it also
has some downsides (apart of the obvious one: the need to invest the
effort to make configure run on DJGPP platforms). The most important
consideration is that Emacs is one of the few ``basic tools'' (which
include Make) that could benefit from the fact that you don't need too
many non-standard tools, let alone a fully operational DJGPP
installation, to build them.
> This header could be a maintenance problem.
In practice, it isn't. We don't change anything in sys/config.h for a
long time. It's a matter of relatively simple comparison and adding a
few lines to msdos/sed*.inp, to have a new release of Emacs build with
DJGPP.
Note that Emacs is not completely autoconfiscated yet; there are
headers like src/m/i386.h and src/s/msdos.h that are maintained
manually.
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