Re: improve demo-hardcode (e.g. on Solaris)

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> Hi Gary,

Hallo Ralf!

>>I suggest that we put the test in a
>>big `case $host_os in' block and do the right thing on each platform.
> 
> That will be much more work, though, and error-prone for new systems[1].
> It's not so clear to me, either.  Solaris installations could have GNU
> binutils objdump installed, for example.  We might want to prefer it if
> it was available.

True, but if the default case is to continue with what we do already, then it
will a) be better than our current demo-hardcode test b) be easier to maintain
because it will be clear which code is needed for each platform that is an
exception.

> My approach is rather autoconf-like: if the tool is available and seems
> to work, use it.  FWIW, I'd be happy to implement stricter functionality
> checks on these tools.  Or put it someplace more suitable.

Okay, if you prefer that approach, I have no problem as long as we keep track
of why the various extra tools are needed (in this case, something about
solaris embedding the compiler command in debug data, requiring something
other than grep to avoid false positives).

> Two things: I can remove both objdump and dump from my fix, as I only
> know of failures on Solaris right now (will go and check the archives
> though, before I commit).

Since this is for the testsuite, and doesn't affect the functionality of what
we install, I think we can afford a little more leniancy when worrying about
stability.

> For another, I don't really like putting different things into the
> different branches unless really necessary.  Too many bugreports
> necessitating backports.  :(

Well, that is the point of having branches in the first place!

The real problem is that we have allowed ourselves to be sucked into
continuing to support branch-1-5, which means that effort we should be
spending on fixing the last few bugs in branch-2-0 is wasted in backporting
fixes to an essentially deprecated tree.

Cheers,
        Gary.
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan      ())_.  address@hidden,gnu.org}
Research Scientist   ( '/   http://tkd.kicks-ass.net
GNU Hacker           / )=   http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool
Technical Author   `(_~)_   http://sources.redhat.com/autobook

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