LYNX-DEV BSD makefile support 4

[Michael Sokolov]

   Roger Hill <address@hidden> writes:
>Isn't this discussion pointless?
   As I have said in previous messages, I didn't mean to start an East
Coast vs. West Coast flame war, I just want to help people.
   I see you saying that the Makefile system is deprecated and you urge
everyone to move to the auto-configure script. However, not everyone would
like that. A UNIX guru who knows every line in his/her OS's source code
would certainly prefer a Makefile that he/she can review and/or edit,
rather than a mysterious 160 KB (!) shell script. A Makefile is completely
predictable: one can see what files are compiled and what options are used,
and one can change that if necessary. With an autoconfigure monster script,
one runs it and has no idea what that alien ship is going to do.
   You can't just throw out the traditional Makefile, since many people
depend on it. The only way I can compile Lynx is to use the target I wrote
a couple of days ago, and the whole point of my argument is to make it
available to others. Of course, I could post it on my homepage, but that's
counterproductive: imagine what would happen if everyone starts doing that.
Such publications should be centralized.
   When I loaded that 160 KB monster in an editor and tried to decipher it,
I did notice references to BSDI, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. But these
are just special cases! The general case, i.e., the pure 4.4BSD tape from
UC Berkeley, is missing. You may think that no one uses it, but there is an
example to the contrary right in front of you: I'm going to install pure
BSD in a couple of weeks.
   Think of it this way. The target I have written is specifically
optimized for pure 4.4BSD and BSDI. It has been tested on these systems and
is known to work beautifully. For users of these systems, it will give
optimum results, since it's specifically optimized and tested. The old BSDI
target, on the other hand, didn't work in the optimum fashion. Besides
SVR4, it defined NO_FILIO_H and NO_UTMP, even though these features ARE
available on all BSD systems. This means that the existing target compiles
an executable that is not optimized for its target system and doesn't use
all of its features. In particular, needlessly defining NO_UTMP would make
the inside-domain and outside-domain divisions unavailable when they could
be available with correct compilation options.
   As for the developmental code, I did get the latest one
(lynx2.7.1ac-0.23.zip), but it's no different from the previous ones. Yes,
the autoconfigure monster has been added, but the traditional Makefile is
still broken.
   Why can't you just add my target to the Makefile? It does the same thing
as the existing one, except that it sets the compilation options correctly.
If you don't want to update the code that you consider deprecated, why
can't you assign this task to someone who doesn't think that way (e.g. me)?
   
   Sincerely,
   Michael Sokolov
   Phone: 216-646-1864
   ARPA Internet SMTP mail: address@hidden
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