23 Jun
2024
23 Jun
'24
3:16 a.m.
On 23 Jun 2024, at 04:16, Luther Johnson
<luther.johnson(a)makerlisp.com> wrote:
If I could say something a little more meta, and echoing an earlier
comment - autotools, configure, etc, don't do the port for you - it's up
to the author to decide and test what OS features are required, and if
something hasn't been too implicitly assumed, if a "needs this"
hasn't
been left out, then the "configure && make" process will give you the
right build for a system that is indeed, already supported. If it
doesn't build, we can interpret that as "not supported", or that the
author did not sufficiently adjust input to the build process, or test
similar-enough configurations, to get the right build for that system.
The author thus ends up searching for a sweet spot: test too many things, and people
complain that you’re wasting time checking something that is always true; test too few,
and it will break on relatively common platforms.
As an example, mentioned up-thread, building on Ultrix in 2024: you need to test and work
around a bunch of things that have been fixed on anything updated since the mid-90’s to
get a clean build on Ultrix, SunOS-4.x, etc. Your average Linux or macOS user sees this
as pointless time wasting.
There’s no right answer here: someone is always annoyed at you.
d