[TUHS] Building programs (Re: Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy' The Register

[David Arnold]

> On 23 Jun 2024, at 04:16, Luther Johnson <luther.johnson at 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. 




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