Re: TODO additions

[Dave Love <d.love@dl.ac.uk>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Autoconf does not determine which *.h files to use.
> configure decides that based on the configuration name.

If the configuration files were organized to match the canonical
system name components (derived by autoconf), I expect you could avoid
the big case analysis in configure.in (some of which currently
references non-existent files).

> Indeed, the proposal that was made was that Autoconf should
> determine on its own the definitions that are now in the *.h files.

By who?  It should certainly do a lot more, and it shouldn't process
everything with cpp, but shell fragments are fine for storing info
that can't (easily or reliably?) be determined automatically.

> ORDINARY_LINK is one of those symbols.  Right now it is defined in
> certain *.h files.  Part of this proposal is that Autoconf should
> define it directly.

What proposal?  I haven't said that, at least.

> I therefore challenge anyone to show a way that Autoconf can determine
> the proper value for ORDINARY_LINK.  I don't think this is easy.

It's not clear to me exactly what it means, even.  That is part of the
problem with the current setup.  (I mean in instances of real problems
with it that I've tackled.  I don't remember crossing swords with
ORDINARY_LINK specifically.)

[Why would Emacs need to be linked differently from any other program?
It's not as if others don't use unexec, for instance.]