[Ecls-list] Help needed, really

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 3:51 PM, David Brown <lisp at davidb.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 01 2011, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
>
>> On POSIX systems, ECL can just issue `file
>> test-program-linked-against-required-c-lib' and use the output to
>> determine the binary flavour.  On non-posix systems (not many, among
>> the platforms where this actually matters.), it can have its own
>> custom program to look at the header of the test program.  Certainly
>> using Autoconf's triplet in an improved way may remove the need to
>> have to write custom header reading program.
>
> I might be missing something, but why is this something at ECL needs to
> do, or even should be doing?  If you need to know the format of the
> executables, why not issue these tests as part of the build system?  I
> don't see why some knowledge needed by one specific application should
> be included in ECL itself.

There is absolutely no need for ECL to be a useful Lisp system for
ECL-based programs that target multilib platforms.  So, I believe you are
missing nothing.  And as I said, I spent more time arguing this  than
I expected.
Consequently, I disabled OpenAxiom build  with ECL where this is a
known problem.
Therefore, there is no more "need" for ECL to do anything on this.
For non-multilib
platforms, ECL-based OpenAxiom build should continue to work (as it
does for other
Lisp systems that find it appropriate to offer better support for
multilib platforms.)

-- Gaby