Ron Garret wrote:
> The fundamental problem is that uname -m does not and CAN not contain
> enough information to decide which architecture to build for, because
> on a biarch system there are three different possibilities (32-bit, 64-
> bit and fat binary), and which one is right depends on the user's
> desires.
Indeed. Another example of this problem is GNU gmp, which - on a Solaris 7
system, where config.guess returns "sparc-sun-solaris2.7" - detects that
the CPU is more capable than what most programs use, and decides to build
in 64-bit mode:
checking build system type... ultrasparc2i-sun-solaris2.7
checking host system type... ultrasparc2i-sun-solaris2.7
...
using ABI="64"
CC="gcc"
CFLAGS="-O2 -m64 -mptr64 -mcpu=ultrasparc"
CPPFLAGS=""
Unfortunately, this is not what I desired, because I cannot link 32-bit
mode programs with a 64-bit mode library.
Also, when I specify a --prefix and a --libdir to configure, I'm assuming
a build for a particular architecture. If configure makes a random decision
about the architecture, and the package then installs 64-bit libraries in
/usr/local/lib (rather than /usr/local/lib64 on Linux or /usr/local/lib/64
on Solaris), the system will get into trouble.
Bruno
