Re: [PATCH 5/5] configure.ac: upgrade to a compilation check for sysinfo

From: Eli Schwartz <eschwartz@gentoo.org>
Date: May 15, 2025, 20:17 UTC
Message-ID: <44f2741b-a77d-4bac-b4ba-63e23cbc1901@gentoo.org>
In-Reply-To: <56706ad8-93c6-48cd-ad16-9d8b00a669c9@ramsayjones.plus.com>

On 5/8/25 7:01 PM, Ramsay Jones wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

>> So you are indeed teaching autoconf to check for this function, but
>> should we also ask whether it's worth continued maintenance of autoconf?
>> It was/is not clear to me who the stakeholders are for the autoconf support.
> 
> Hmm, someone posted a list of people using autoconf somewhat recently
> to the mailing-list ... I don't have it to hand, but cygwin was one
> of the projects using it.

Thanks for the correction. This solves my major concern...

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>> On the other hand, it sounds like this patch (and commit 50dec7c566
>> "config.mak.uname: add sysinfo() configuration for cygwin") only modify
>> autoconf out of a sense of duty, rather than finding autoconf useful.
> 
> Hmm, I am not convinced (yet) that meson is all that useful either. ;)
>  
>> What does it say about the autoconf support if the people finding bugs
>> in it don't even use it, but only discovered the bug while working on a
>> different build system they do use and depend on (config.mak.uname, or
>> meson.build, both count here).
> 
> I am trying very hard not to express a view on this debate. :)
> 
> [well, except that I find CMake to be absolutely awful!]

... because to my way of thinking, the ultimate proof of usefulness is that people, well, *use* it. Gentoo uses Meson, ipso facto it is useful. :)

From my experience with the ./configure script it wasn't clear to *me* that anyone did use it (and I did a non-exhaustive check of other distributors). If cygwin uses it, it is useful and the question becomes *whether* to (properly) deprecate it after evaluating the existing options and balancing use cases with maintenance burden, rather than "just let it rot until we finish discussing its likely deletion".

I'm still not volunteering to do the actual fixing of ./configure :D but testing is easy if someone else wrote the fix...

-- 
Eli Schwartz