[Quilt-dev] [PATCH] user-definable tail and grep

[Jean Delvare]

Hi all,

In order to get quilt to run on my Solaris 8 workstation, I would need
to be able to tell it which tail [1] and grep binaries to use.
Unfortunately, quilt's configure script doesn't let me do that. Attached
is a patch addressing the problem. There are surprisingly few calls to
tail and grep in the quilt scripts (2 and 8, respectively), so these
changes are less intrusive that I would have first thought.

Still, given recent discussions about the best way to address
incompatibility issues, these patches may be controversial, which is why
I am posting them here first rather than applying them directly (as I'd
have done a few days ago).

My opinion is that alternative compatibility solutions (such as a
separate subdirectory with replacement stuff, to be prepended to quilt's
$PATH) have only been mentioned but nothing is currently implemented
AFAIK, and it may take some time before something is. So I don't think
we should stop using the old approach until something else is available,
if anyone actually goes working on this. For this reason, I would be in
favor of applying these patches. But I am of course open to objections,
especially given the context and the audience.

[1] Solaris' /usr/bin/tail doesn't support -n 42, it wants -42.
Fortuntely enough, it also has /usr/xpg4/bin/tail, which does understand
-n 42. But /usr/xpg4/bin isn't in the path by default, and I fear the
consequences of adding it in front of my path, given that it contains
similar replacements for many other commands, sometimes with
incompatible command line options.

Thanks,
-- 
Jean Delvare

quilt-CVS-configure.ac-with-tail.diff
Description: Text document

quilt-CVS-configure.ac-with-grep.diff
Description: Text document