Re: LYNX-DEV BSD makefile support 4

[Bela Lubkin]

Michael Sokolov wrote:

>    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.

The configure script outputs a makefile and a lynx-cfg.h.  You are free,
even encouraged, to look at the results before running `make`.  The
makefile is shrinking, as more irrelevant targets are removed: this
means that the stuff you actually have to look at is getting smaller and
easier to deal with.

If your system is capable of providing the needed information from its
utmp records, configure will determine that and leave out "-DNO_UTMP".
If it fails to do that on your system, talk to the maintainers of the
Lynx autoconfig mechanism; they can fix it for you.  Continuing to
maintain an archaic system-specific Makefile is not the right approach.

> 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.

Nonsense.

"pure BSD" won't boot on your system or much of anything else.  By the
time it's running well enough to do things like compile Lynx, you're
going to have made a large number of changes to make it work.

Is your 4.4BSD-with-Michael-Sokolov-impurities going to need exactly the
same Lynx makefile as does your current BSDI system?  Maybe, maybe not.
configure will figure it out for you.  That's what it's for.

>Bela<
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