Re: 1,000 year backward compatability of tools

2003-02-20 Thread Chris Albertson
I have a few "antique" computers. The first Compaq, A very early Sun SPARC 1. a Mac before they offered a hard drive and others Had a VAX too, but no place to store it and some guy offered me $1,500 for the tape drive... These machines are only worth keeping if you still have the old software t

Re: 1,000 year backward compatability of tools

2003-02-19 Thread Bruce Korb
Harlan Stenn wrote: > > I guess it's time for me to chime in. > > Dave Mills expect NTP to compile on anything he can get his hands on. That's very nice. Why does he need to do this? I mean, the compelling reason? > I've been lucky so far in that some of the older gear he has is breaking. I

Re: 1,000 year backward compatability of tools

2003-02-19 Thread Charles Wilson
Bruce Korb wrote: Paul Eggert wrote: Alex Hornby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: On a related note, does the restriction of not using shell functions in autoconf macros still remain, For Autoconf itself, we still avoid shell functions. But of course you can use shell functions in your own macr

Re: 1,000 year backward compatability of tools

2003-02-19 Thread Harlan Stenn
I guess it's time for me to chime in. Dave Mills expect NTP to compile on anything he can get his hands on. I've been lucky so far in that some of the older gear he has is breaking. I do, however, still support SunOS4.1 and Ultrix. And NTP will still use ansi2knr where needed. I am also workin

Re: 1,000 year backward compatability of tools

2003-02-19 Thread Bruce Korb
Charles Wilson wrote: > I think the "winning" argument was as follows: >for archaic systems whose shell does not support shfuncs, 'somebody' > should create a snapshot of bash with a frozen autotool version That's the argument that has been put forth over and over for years. I couldn't re

Re: 1,000 year backward compatability of tools

2003-02-19 Thread Paul Eggert
"John W. Eaton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > even Ultrix had another shell, /bin/sh5, if I remember correctly, > that did support shell functions, and it would not have been too > difficult for configure to attempt to find it Recent versions of Autoconf generate "configure" scripts that do just

Re: 1,000 year backward compatability of tools

2003-02-19 Thread Thomas E. Dickey
On Wed, 19 Feb 2003, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > On Wed, 19 Feb 2003, John W. Eaton wrote: > > > > But now? Do we really have to worry about these old systems? If > > people enjoy the vintage hardware, then is it that bad if they can > > only use vintage software on it as well? > > To install moder

Re: 1,000 year backward compatability of tools

2003-02-19 Thread Bob Friesenhahn
On Wed, 19 Feb 2003, John W. Eaton wrote: > > But now? Do we really have to worry about these old systems? If > people enjoy the vintage hardware, then is it that bad if they can > only use vintage software on it as well? To install modern software on one of these vintage systems would be like p

Re: 1,000 year backward compatability of tools

2003-02-19 Thread John W. Eaton
On 19-Feb-2003, Bruce Korb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: | Paul Eggert wrote: | > | > Personally I'm becoming more inclined to start using shell functions. | > Perhaps in Autoconf 3. | | If my memory serves, GCC has finally said, "Enough with K&R already!" | but everyone is still saying, "You first

Re: 1,000 year backward compatability of tools

2003-02-19 Thread Bruce Korb
Paul Eggert wrote: > > Alex Hornby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > On a related note, does the restriction of not using shell functions in > > autoconf macros still remain, > > For Autoconf itself, we still avoid shell functions. But of course > you can use shell functions in your own macros,