Re: parted integration

[David Cuthbert <dacut@xxxxxxxxx>]

Markus Hitter wrote:
> Am 22.08.2006 um 08:39 schrieb David Cuthbert:
> > I don't get it.  Why do people insist on using autoconf to adapt to an 
> > OS' quirks when a package only supports one OS?
>
> Maybe I'm missing something, but "Linux" isn't "one OS"

No, but I've yet to see a distro which doesn't use glibc and gcc.  In 
that manner, it's "one OS."

> and autoconf's 
> primary goal is to detect all the quirks of an OS by it's self.

If that's the case, it should never run "uname" or complain that the OS 
isn't in the set (X, Y, Z).  It's ok to say that features X, Y, Z 
weren't detected, though.

In reality, autoconf's is primarily used to generate Makefiles for 
package maintainers who are {unwilling, unable, too lazy} to write a 
Makefile.  Not that this in itself is a bad thing (maintaining Makefiles 
is difficult and thankless), but autoconf is a bad tool for this job.