Re: lynx-dev how can one identify what options are compiled into a binary?

[Al Gilman]

to follow up on what Larry W. Virden said:

> If folk would like to brainstorm on how something like this could be
> implemented, I suspect that a C programmer might turn up to implement it...

My latest pipe dreams on this topic involved whatever the
configure and make process generates in the way of a log for
documentation.  The strategy is to give the configuration an
identity and cross-link the executable and the log with the aid
of that identity.

The motivation is the idea that for platforms such as Win95
served by centrally-compiled binaries, the make log information
would not need to bloat the image nor even be distributed.  What
the executable would emit on upset or user grumble was a URI for
the configuration documentation.  What the binary creator would
commit to do is to make the technical backups for the
configuration available by Web.

For diagnostic purposes, it would be good to have not just the
settings that went into Configure but all the bumps and grumbles
that came out.

I don't know what cross-platform registry services we might want
to build on.  How broad is the support for Content-IDs?  For a
manual process, one would just mail the log into a central
archive and use the Message-ID from this message as a rough and
ready document key for the documentation.

Maybe I should take that more seriously.  If people mailed in a
standard form with standard attachments when they get a clean
compile, we would have a database of existing configurations.
Until Lynx does file upload by HTTP we could use MIME.

The people working on signatures for trusted software would have
done some thinking we might be able to re-use, here.

Al