Re: [Mingw-users] Fwd: Re: make bug 3523436

[Teemu N. <sti...@ya...>]

On 17.5.2012 10:53, Joe Burmeister wrote:
> On 17/05/12 03:47, Teemu Nätkinniemi wrote:
>> On 16.5.2012 18:06, Joe Burmeister wrote:
>>
>>> On 16/05/12 15:54, Teemu Nätkinniemi wrote:
>>>> On 16.5.2012 17:40, Joe Burmeister wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Even if you use "--host=mingw32"  you see the same problem as with
>>>>> "--host=i586-mingw32" below.
>>>>> Only "--host=i586-mingw32msvc" builds and only if you do that one
>>>>> character fix to make the offending line match the wild cards of other
>>>>> parts that also refer to mingw32.
>>>>>
>>>>> The name must match what the mingw executables are called, and for me at
>>>>> least, that's "i586-mingw32msvc".
>>>> Whoever is releasing Ubuntu's cross-compiler should really migrate away
>>>> from i586-mingw32msvc naming. I haven't seen that in years and it really
>>>> should be deprecated.
>>    >   Quite possibly, but at the cost of one extra wild card, making the line
>>    >   in question match the others, it and and other crazy names, can be
>>    >   supported in the ./configure file though.
>>
>> You do have a valid point but at the moment both official MinGW and most
>> major Linux distributions apart from Debian based use *-*-mingw32 as a
>> host triplet. Supporting *-*-mingw32* would mean all the sources using
>> autotools would have to be patched instead of going the easier route
>> which would mean Debian based distros toeing the line and using
>> *-*-mingw32 as a host triplet.
>
> But Debian based distributions is an awful lot of distributions and an
> awful lot of current installs. In many polls I've seen, it seams to be
> over half of the Linux installs. We aren't talking a big change to
> support them, it's one character, and it's not even a unique change,
> it's merely making one line match others doing the same thing. Arguing
> Debian distros should instead make much bigger changes doesn't make
> sense to me.

That one character change needs to be done to all packages that support 
Autoconf/Automake whereas whoever maintains Debian-based MinGW packages 
could just change their build script to say --host=i686-pc-mingw32 or 
just =mingw32 and the next release of packages would be automatically 
compatible with rest of the MinGW world.