Re: gnu utilities for MVS and CMS

[Eric Blake]

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According to Paul Edwards on 2/1/2009 7:06 AM:
>>> I can't run configure.  The target is the mainframe, not the
>>> compiler I have on my PC.
>>
>> The ./configure script works for cross-compilation cases, if you use the
>> right --build and --host flags.
> 
> Ok, I couldn't see any obvious list of builds, and I would have
> been surprised to see MVS on the list anyway.  The INSTALL
> file suggests looking at config.sub, but I don't see one of those.

MVS is on the list of recognized platforms:

$ ./build-aux/config.sub mvs
i370-ibm-mvs

However, you are correct that the list of recognized platforms is often
larger than the list of supported platforms.

> 
> I thought that maybe just specifying a guess would come
> back with a list of valid options, but didn't get very far:
> 
> c:\devel\m4x>bash ./configure --build mvs

That is the correct invocation (configure calls build-aux/config.sub under
the hood).

> configure: error: cannot find install-sh or install.sh in build-aux
> "."/build-aux

This points to an error in your environment for running ./configure,
because the file is right there:

$ ls -F build-aux/
announce-gen*  depcomp*          gnupload*       mdate-sh*
config.guess*  gendocs.sh*       install-sh*     missing*
config.sub*    git-version-gen*  link-warning.h  texinfo.tex

What version of bash are you using, and from where did you get it?  I
think your problem is that you are trying to use a sub-standard Windows
environment to cross-compile to an MVS environment; if you must use
Windows, you may have much more success using pre-compiled utilities from
Cygwin; but even better would be using something like GNU/Linux as your
starting point.  At least that way, you will only be fighting one set of
portability issues (how to make MVS happy), and not two simultaneous sets
(how to make Windows run your configure script in cross-compilation mode
in such a way to make MVS happy).

> 
> Ok, but it'd be a whole lot easier for someone like me if there was
> C89 code sitting there after an extraction and all I had to do was
> organize a C89 compiler.  For people with Unix-like systems, the
> option would still exist to run configure which would delete all
> the generated c89 files and replace them with whatever it is that
> configure thinks is a better idea than C89.

If you have a C89 compiler, then you should be able to get to a reasonably
portable shell and make implementation.  With those three programs in
place, you should be able to run the ./configure script and then run make,
at which point you will have C89 code to compile.  There is no point in
bloating the distribution tarball to account for people who don't have the
standard set of tools already available on their system.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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