Re: AC_SYS_RESTARTABLE_SYSCALLS

[Harlan Stenn]

> > For me I guess it's a philosophical issue.  I think the point of
> > autoconf is to support a wide range of systems, including systems
> > which were created 10 years ago.  For example, in 1992 I ported UUCP
> > to SVR2 systems which had been built in 1984; autoconf was very
> > helpful.
> 
> Yes, but SVR2 was released in April 1984, so it's now nearly a 20-year
> old system.  Nobody ports to SVR2 any more.  Or to SVR3 (released
> 1986).  These are all dead systems, outside of museums.  Perhaps there
> are a few of them running production somewhere, but nobody ports
> software to them.
> 
> Ultrix 4.0 is a bit newer, but it's pretty much dead as well.  There
> are still a few hobbyists running ancient Ultrix 4.0 castoff hardware,
> I suppose, but the most recent report I found on Usenet of anyone
> trying to port software of any kind to Ultrix 4.0 was dated May 1998.

ntp still gets build on a Lot of ancient systems, and it uses automake and
autoconf.

People may not be porting new code to old systems, but code that has been
around for a while (like t-uucp) may certainly want to take advantage of
recent versions of automake and autoconf.  And packages like t-uucp are
often needed on those (increasingly rare) occasions where somebody has to
keep an ancient system running and talking to other machines.

H