Re: [Bug-tar] ./configure has become unusable slow

[Paul Eggert]

Joerg Schilling <address@hidden> writes:

> Running ./configure now takes nearly 6 hours on a 
> 25 MHz Motorola 68020 running SunOS-4.1

A 25 MHz Motorola 68020!  Wow!  I haven't used one of those since the 1980s.

Anyway, Autoconf-generated 'configure' scripts have known problems
dealing with SunOS 4.x, because of inefficiencies (and worse: bugs) in
SunOS 4.x /bin/sh (see, for example, Sun bugs 1123136, 1134744,
1170383).

If this problem had arisen 10 or 15 years ago it would have been a big
deal, but nowadays few people outside of museums still actually use
SunOS 4.x.  The current suggestion for computer-museum curators
etc. is to port Bash to your SunOS 4.x host.  If 'bash' is in your
$PATH and if 'sh' doesn't have modern features, 'configure' will use
'bash'.

PS.  This is really an 'autoconf' issue, not a 'tar', issue, so I'll
CC: this message to bug-autoconf.