Re: About Section 7.2.2 "Utilities in Makefiles" of the GCS

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Karl Berry wrote on Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 12:36:50AM CET:
> 
>     Very often, one just needs to know whether two files are identical
>     or different, in which case "cmp" could be used. But it has been
>     reported that "cmp" has problems on some platforms,
> 
> Ralf (or anyone), do you know what these cmp "problems" are on "some
> platforms"?  Oh well, I suppose there is no hope of fixing them, anyway.

\n vs \r\n issue, I think.  It's sometimes convenient to ignore those
differences.

>     Could it be advised to test the presence of "diff", and use "cmp" if
>     "diff" couldn't be found?
> 
> Well, that sounds like a sensible approach on the face of it.  I don't
> think that standards.texi should make it mandatory, but it could be a
> suggestion/explanation.  Ralf?

It's a possibility.  Just needing to take care of diff is certainly less
of a problem than trying out all GCS-listed tools in configure.  I'll
try to write an Autoconf patch (will be a couple of days).

Cheers,
Ralf